Bon Appétit, Your Majesty: Culinary takes (or a banquet of secrets and flavors) — what we learned from episodes 1-2

Bon Appétit, Your Majesty stages palace intrigue with a dash of fantasy and cooks it into every scene. Episodes 1 and 2 of the drama open the royal menu with two striking courses, gochujang butter bibimbap and an improvised sous-vide steak, dishes that blend survival, power, and taste in unforgettable ways.

At the royal table in Bon Appétit, Your Majesty, food becomes negotiation, memory, and the part of the fragile art of trust. By watching a modern chef dropped into Joseon’s court kitchen, we see how flavors act as weapons, comforts, and lessons that still echo in our own kitchens.

And if these scenes in Bon Appétit, Your Majesty left you hungry too, wondering how those bowls and cuts might taste beyond the screen, you’re not alone. This is where we roll up our sleeves, dissect the drama’s recipes, and see how to bring a touch of Joseon’s royal table into our own homes.

The first course: gochujang butter bibimbap

The first flavor of Bon Appétit, Your Majesty comes not from a gilded palace banquet but from a hidden hut in the woods, where hunger presses harder than protocol. Ji-young steps into this space with nothing but instinct, scraps of vegetables, and the unlikely treasures tucked into her coat: a pat of butter and a tube of gochujang. What she creates is not simply bibimbap, but a bowl that carries memory, comfort, and audacity in equal measure.

The rice is hot and fragrant, a bed waiting to gather everything that remains. The vegetables, stir-fried in turns, bring texture and color: something crisp, something earthy, something green that tastes of the soil. The butter melts into the gochujang, cutting its fire with richness, turning heat into warmth, and transforming scarcity into abundance. When the spoon dives in and the ingredients collapse into one another, the flavors do what etiquette can’t. They cross boundaries and sit everyone at the same table.

For King Yi-heon, the first bite shocks his tongue, then unlocks something deeper. Spiciness mingles with nostalgia, summoning the ghost of meals once shared with his mother. Tears rise before he can hide them, and for a fleeting moment the tyrant dissolves into a son, vulnerable and remembered. That’s the magic of bibimbap: it mixes not only food but histories, turning a prisoner’s offering into a king’s moment of grace.

To bring this course from Bon Appétit, Your Majesty into a modern kitchen, the recipe is deceptively simple. Steam short-grain rice until it clings softly. Prepare vegetables in separate pans, spinach blanched with garlic, bean sprouts with a drizzle of sesame oil, carrots and mushrooms sautéed until just tender. Fry an egg sunny-side-up for the crown. Then melt butter with gochujang into a sauce that glows red and gold, pour it over the bowl, and stir until everything is coated in heat and silk. It’s rustic and royal at once, a dish that proves survival can taste like revelation.

Cooking under fire: the improvised sous-vide steak

If the first course in Bon Appétit, Your Majesty whispers of comfort, the second blazes with tension. Ji-young is no longer in the fragile safety of a hut but in the mansion of corrupt officials, cooking under watchful eyes that see her not as a chef but as a disposable pawn. The kitchen is stripped of luxury, the cuts of meat are tough and unyielding, yet from scarcity she draws invention.

She chooses a piece of steak, not tenderloin fit for nobles but a cut closer to survival, something that needs coaxing, patience, and technique to yield its heart. Instead of surrendering, she remembers the language of modern kitchens: sous-vide. With no machine at hand in Bon Appétit, Your Majesty, she seals the meat in kelp and fat-brushed paper, and lowers it into water, letting slow heat undo its resistance. What should’ve been gristle becomes tenderness, time itself turning fibers into silk.

The dish arrives plain in portion, modest in appearance, and yet carries the weight of a wager. The nobles scoff at first, but the flavor blooms. Deep, savory, and layered with an umami powder she recreates in Bon Appétit, Your Majesty as a Joseon version of monosodium glutamate, it shocks their palates with a taste both ancient and new, a flavor that modern cooks can easily replicate today with MSG itself.

King Yi-heon arrives then and tastes her food. The verdict falls with certainty: perfect. In that moment, the power of the room tilts. A woman’s survival rests on the tenderness of a steak, and a king’s palate reshapes fate.

To replicate this course from Bon Appétit, Your Majesty in a modern kitchen, choose your cut wisely. A fillet or ribeye will melt with ease, but even flank, chuck, or round, humble and stubborn cuts, can be transformed by time. Season with salt, garlic, and soy, slip the meat into a sealed bag, and let it rest in a bath just below boiling, an hour or more. When the fibers yield, sear it fast in a hot pan to claim a crust, then slice thin to reveal the patience within. It’s not only a recipe but a reminder that resilience, like tenderness, often hides inside the hardest parts.

What Bon Appétit, Your Majesty teaches us at the royal table

Two courses, two trials, and two revelations. Bon Appétit, Your Majesty shows us that food holds memory, power, and the fragile spark of survival. In the hut, a bowl of gochujang butter bibimbap turns hunger into warmth and makes a tyrant remember he was once a son. At the mansion, an improvised sous-vide steak transforms a death sentence into recognition, proving that ingenuity in the kitchen can bend even the strictest hierarchies.

Bon Appétit, Your Majesty turns cooking into a language, one where recipes speak of grief, desire, and dignity. Bibimbap, with its mix of rice and vegetables, becomes a chorus of flavors that cross boundaries, while the steak, tender against the odds, becomes a negotiation written in heat and time. Both dishes teach us that resilience isn’t about perfection but about finding grace in scraps, in patience, and in the courage to serve what feels impossible.

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And for us watching Bon Appétit, Your Majesty, these meals echo beyond the screen. To cook them at home is to taste a little of that audacity: to stir butter into gochujang and let the spice soften, or to let heat coax tenderness out of a tough cut. In the act of cooking, the lessons of Bon Appétit, Your Majesty slip from the royal table into our kitchens, reminding us that every dish can carry history, rebellion, and care in its steam.

What about you? Are you already imagining what flavors the next episodes will serve, and how the drama will keep folding power, memory, and desire into its dishes? Perhaps you’re even tempted to gather these recipes into a book of your own, a collection where every course tells a story, part guide and part diary of the meals that shaped a kingdom. Are you?

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