Daepa-steak (Butter-Poached Leek with Roast Aubergine Sauce) · Im Hui-won

Name: Daepa-steak (Butter-Poached Leek with Roast Aubergine Sauce) · Im Hui-won
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 2
Cuisine: Korean
Ingredients: 2 Daepa (Korean green onion); 250 g Unsalted butter; 2 pinches Salt; 1 pinch Ground black pepper; Dried kelp (dashima); 300 g Aubergine; 1 tbsp Doenjang (fermented soybean paste); 40 g Maesil-cheong (green plum syrup); 1 tbsp Deulkkae (whole perilla seeds); Lemon juice

Cut lengths of leek white are poached in 250 g of melted butter over low heat for 10–15 minutes, then moved to a second pan and seared hard. Stood upright on a doenjang-and-maesil aubergine purée, it is a Korean vegetable served the way a steakhouse serves beef.

Source

Recette de 임희원 · 👨‍🍳 Chef · Im Hui-won — cook on MBN's Altoran. The channel's own text names him only as '임희원 레시피' and states no professional title, so none is claimed here

Les noms des cuisiniers et créateurs figurent uniquement à titre de mention de source. More Recipes Please est indépendant et n'est ni affilié, ni approuvé, ni sponsorisé par eux.

MBN Altoran (알토란) — Published by MBN on Altoran's own channel (알토란 - 집밥 레시피, @Recipe_MBN), headed 'Altoran episode 365, Im Hui-won's recipe'. Broadcaster-published text, not a viewer's write-up — but it is the most self-contradictory of the ten mined here, and the flaws are documented rather than smoothed over. (1) The description's ingredient header reads '[대파장아찌 재료]' and it is hashtagged #대파장아찌 — a leek PICKLE — while the video's own title is '대파스테이크 만들기' and the method is unmistakably a steak, with no pickling anywhere in it; the title and method are followed here. (2) The doenjang is given as 1 tbsp in the ingredient list and 1 tsp in step 5. (3) Deulkkae appears in step 5 but is missing from the ingredient list. (4) A sheet of dashima is listed but never used in any step. Each is flagged in the relevant note. What marks his version out, once past the errors: the leek white is confited in 250 g of unsalted butter on low for 10–15 minutes, then moved to a SECOND dry pan to be seared hard — and the sauce is air-fried aubergine blitzed with doenjang, maesil-cheong, perilla seed and lemon.

Cuisinier: 임희원

Watch it being made

임희원

⏱ 45 min🍽 2 portions🔥 380 kcal🇰🇷 Corée du Sud

Végétarien

Étapes

Cut the roots off the 2 daepa and cut the white parts into 3–5 cm lengths — his figure.
Melt the 250 g of unsalted butter in a pan over low heat — he describes it as half a block.
💡 Unsalted is specified for a reason. At 250 g, salted butter would season the leeks past saving before you ever reach the salt in step 6.
Slide the leek pieces into the melted butter and cook them on low for 10–15 minutes — his figure — until a knife tip meets no resistance. They should not colour at all.
💡 This is a confit, not a fry. If the butter is bubbling hard or browning, the heat is too high — you want it barely trembling. Colour here means the leek will be bitter before it is tender.
Meanwhile, put the 2 aubergines (300 g) into a preheated air fryer and roast at 200°C for 10 minutes — his figure.
Peel the skin off the roasted aubergines while they are still hot, and blitz the flesh smooth with a hand blender.
💡 Peel it hot — the skin lifts away in sheets straight from the fryer and welds itself back on as it cools. A tea towel over one hand is enough to hold it.
Season the aubergine purée with doenjang, 40 g maesil-cheong, 1 tbsp deulkkae, the juice of ¼ lemon and a pinch of salt, and mix.
💡 How much doenjang? His own text says 1 tbsp in the ingredient list and 1 tsp here — start at the teaspoon and taste your way up. Jarred doenjang ranges wildly in salt, so your palate is a better guide than either of his numbers.
Lift the butter-poached leeks out and move them to a second, dry pan. Leave the butter behind — it is needed at the end.
Sear the leeks over high heat until the cut faces are deeply browned and blistered.
💡 The second pan is not fussiness. The first is full of butter at poaching temperature and will never get hot enough to brown anything — you need a dry, screaming-hot surface for this contrast to happen at all.
Season the seared leeks with salt and pepper.
Spoon a good spoonful of the aubergine sauce onto each plate and spread it into a bed.
💡 Sauce goes under, not over. Poured on top it would soak into the seared faces you just spent high heat creating — the whole point is that the leek meets the sauce only where it stands in it.
Stand the leek pieces upright in the sauce so the browned cut faces point up.
Drizzle the reserved butter from the first pan over the standing leeks and serve at once.

💡 Astuces

Beginner's mistake: trying to poach and sear in one pan. 250 g of butter cannot get hot enough to brown, and tipping it out mid-cook to raise the heat wastes the very butter the last step calls for. Two pans, as he does it.
The butter is not consumed, it is borrowed. Most of the 250 g stays in the pan — strain it, chill it, and you have leek-scented butter for the next week. Read the figure that way and the recipe stops looking extravagant.
No air fryer? Roast the aubergines whole at 200°C in an oven for 25–30 minutes until they collapse, or char them directly over a gas flame for a smokier sauce. That timing is ours — his text gives only the air-fryer figure.
Substitution: no maesil-cheong? 30 g of honey plus a teaspoon of rice vinegar gets close — you need both the sweetness and the sourness, and honey alone leaves the doenjang sitting flat and heavy.
Vegetarian as written, and vegan if you swap the butter for a plant-based block — though at 250 g the butter is genuinely the dish's flavour, not just its fat, so expect a real difference.