This Korean BBQ is traditionally made with beef short ribs, when cooked is called so-galbi-gui, which means "grilled beef ribs." When pork or other meat is used, the dish is labeled correspondingly. For barbecued pork, it is named dwaeji-galbi-gui, which translates to "grilled pork ribs." The marinade for each meat somewhat differs in the ingredients.
Galbi is the Korean term for "rib" and has two types of cuts. One may notice that some Korean restaurants or even in a few supermarkets offer Korean (traditional) or "Wang Galbi" and LA-style galbis. But what makes these two versions of barbecue ribs distinct from each other? For a quick comparison, we are going to focus on the dimension and the cutting of each type.
Both Korean-style and LA-style galbi are both made with beef short ribs. In terms of dimensions, the former is about three to four inches tall and are sliced long and thin to create several flaps. These flat meats are sometimes enveloped around the ribs for about three to five times. The LA-style galbi, on the other hand, is typically three to four inches tall as well and five to seven inches long. The thickness of the meat often differs between ¼ to 1/3 inches.
When it comes to the cutting of the meat, the traditional way involves dividing the meat into parts across the rib bones and is thicker. On the contrary, the LA-style is sliced through the rib bone, therefore exposing three small, cross-section rib bones on one side. To be specific, the Korean-style is shredded parallel while the LA rendition is chopped perpendicular. In that case, LA-style galbi is mostly more tender and leaner, allowing the marinade to flow into meat quicker. Wang Galbi is also much faster to cook on a grill considering its thinness.
Furthermore, on account of Korean-style galbi being thicker, chefs spend more time cutting the meat as it requires lots of effort to achieve the meat's accurate dimension. Because of this, Wang Galbi is more costly than the LA version that doesn't need intensive work in producing the cuts. Slicing is not totally necessary in making LA-style galbis, but rinsing the bone pieces and excess fats are what really needs to be done.
In spite of the differences in measurement and cutting, traditional and LA-style galbis have the same taste when marinated and grilled.
