By Katy Killilea
Families who dream of world travel but are constrained by school schedules, colic, or cash flow can order up an easy dinnertime globe hop from Destination Dinners.
We jetted off (via broiling pan) to Seoul. An origami box filled with tidy packets and bottles of pre-measured ingredients set us up to make bulgogi, which means “fire meat” in Korean. In addition to the ingredients, the kit included a shopping list for the few fresh ingredients needed, a recipe card, ideas for setting the table for maximum authenticity, and a few choice bits of Korean etiquette to help us fit in should we have found ourselves actually transported to Seoul. (You won’t see me leaving chopsticks in my rice bowl.) Even a zip-lock bag for mixing and marinating meat was included. The Destination Dinners person had thought of every detail.
Having all of the ingredients precisely measured and laid out so neatly made meal preparation feel like playing with a chemistry set. The instructions were easy to follow, and the result was delicious. The bulgogi we made is about as un-esoteric as these kits get; there is no kit for tacos, pizza, or pad thai. Destination Dinners allow Rhode Islanders to create meals that we don’t have access to in the form of takeout, and the results are a far cry from anything you might get in a Styrofoam box. So…where shall we go next…Jeju Island? Beirut? Haifa?
The details:
Destination Dinners
$25-$30 per kit
Available online at www.DestinationDinners.com
The waste is not too great–the spices come in darling little plastic boxes that children will definitely repurpose for some mini collection or another, and the origami box is beautiful enough to re-use as a gift box (or recycle) but Tamara’s right–if you cooked from a kit like this every day, it would be a big heap of waste.
Very cute but I guess the downfall is all that packaging and shipping can’t be a very green option.
That is cool!
I have been told we can get Bulgogi as takeout in Providence–does anyone know where?