Bon Appétit Your Majesty Dishes

Are you curious about Bon Appetit Your Majesty Dishes? When a Michelin-level modern chef is flung into the Joseon era, food becomes more than sustenance—it becomes survival, diplomacy, and memory. In Bon Appetit, Your Majesty, each episode is titled after a course or dish, and many scenes revolve around the tension of creating something with limited ingredients under intense pressure.

Below are the signature dishes that appear in the drama and how they are prepared on screen.

Bon Appétit Your Majesty Dishes: Gochujang Butter Bibimbap

This is the iconic dish that opens the series in Episode 1, setting the tone for the entire drama’s fusion approach to Korean cuisine.

In the Drama

Yeon Ji-yeong finds herself in an unfamiliar hut in the Joseon era with only the ingredients she can scavenge. Using whatever vegetables are available in the hut, plus butter and gochujang that she had in her coat pocket, she creates a bibimbap that changes everything.

The Cooking Process:

Ji-yeong begins by cooking rice and preparing each vegetable separately to maintain distinct textures and flavors. She blanches spinach and seasons it with garlic and salt, then sautés various vegetables like carrots, mushrooms, and zucchini individually.

The revolutionary element comes in the sauce. Instead of using traditional sesame oil, Ji-yeong makes hazelnut brown butter (beurre noisette) by melting butter until it turns golden brown and develops a nutty aroma. She then whisks gochujang into this browned butter, creating a rich, spicy sauce that bridges French technique with Korean tradition.

She assembles the dish by placing warm rice in a bowl, arranging the prepared vegetables in sections on top, adding an egg (poached or soft fried) in the center, then generously drizzling the butter-gochujang sauce over everything.

The Reception:

The King and Gil-geum initially find it spicy, but the richness of the butter softens the heat, and they gradually fall under its spell. This dish also carries deep emotional weight, triggering a memory in the king connected to his mother, proving that food can unlock the heart as powerfully as any key.

Bon Appétit Your Majesty Dishes: Sous-Vide Cuisine

Episode 2 is titled “Course N° 2 Sous Vide Cuisine,” and it showcases Ji-yeong’s ingenuity in adapting modern cooking techniques to the constraints of the Joseon era.

In the Drama

Held captive and under intense pressure, Ji-yeong must prepare a special dish to win her freedom. With no modern equipment at her disposal, she improvises a sous-vide approach using only what the Joseon era can provide.

The Cooking Process:

Ji-yeong carefully wraps meat (likely using parchment, kelp, or another available material as a seal) and cooks it slowly in water or broth at a controlled low temperature. This mimics the low-temperature precision cooking of modern French cuisine in a decidedly low-tech way.

She maintains the water at a steady temperature just below boiling for a prolonged period (likely an hour or more), allowing the meat to cook gently and evenly. This technique breaks down connective tissues while keeping the meat incredibly tender.

After the slow cooking process, she finishes the meat by quickly searing it in a hot pan to develop a flavorful crust on the outside while maintaining the perfectly cooked interior.

This technique yields remarkably tender meat with edge-to-edge perfect doneness, proving that even in less-than-ideal conditions, culinary genius can prevail.

Bon Appétit Your Majesty Dishes: Clam Spinach Doenjang Soup

This comforting soup appears in the drama as another example of Ji-yeong’s ability to elevate simple, traditional ingredients into something extraordinary.

In the Drama : Bon Appétit Your Majesty Dishes

The Cooking Process:

Ji-yeong starts by preparing a broth base, bringing water or anchovy broth to a boil. She dissolves doenjang (Korean fermented soybean paste) into the boiling liquid, adding minced garlic to build the foundational flavors.

Once the broth is ready, she adds fresh, scrubbed clams and covers the pot. The clams cook for just a few minutes until they open, releasing their briny, oceanic essence into the soup.

She then adds fresh spinach and any available vegetables like zucchini, cooking them briefly until the spinach wilts. The dish can be finished with gochugaru (Korean red pepper flakes) for heat and chopped green onions for freshness.

The result is a deeply savory, umami-rich soup that showcases the clean flavors of the sea combined with the earthy depth of fermented soybeans—a dish that’s ready in about 15 minutes but delivers comfort and satisfaction.

Bon Appétit Your Majesty Dishes: Rice Wine Beef Bourguignon

Episode 8 introduces this brilliant fusion dish during a high-stakes cooking competition between Ming and Joseon chefs.

In the Drama

This dish represents the ultimate fusion of French technique and Korean ingredients. Ji-yeong reimagines the classic French beef bourguignon by substituting French red wine with Korean rice wine (makgeolli or cheongju), creating a dish that honors both culinary traditions while establishing something entirely new.

The Cooking Process:

Ji-yeong begins by seasoning beef cubes with salt and pepper, then dusting them with flour. She sears the beef in butter or oil in batches until deeply browned, developing rich flavors through the Maillard reaction.

In the same pot, she sautés onions, garlic, and carrots until softened, building the aromatic base. Then comes the crucial step: she deglazes the pot with Korean rice wine, scraping up all the flavorful browned bits from the bottom. This is where the magic happens—the rice wine adds a subtle sweetness and lighter profile compared to French red wine.

She returns the browned beef to the pot along with beef stock, soy sauce, gochugaru (Korean red pepper flakes), and herbs like thyme or bay leaves. The dish is brought to a boil, then reduced to a gentle simmer and covered for 2-3 hours, allowing the beef to become fall-apart tender.

In the final stages of cooking, she adds mushrooms to absorb the rich sauce. The rice wine brings a lighter, slightly sweet profile compared to red wine, creating a uniquely Korean-French hybrid that perfectly embodies the spirit of the drama.

The Art of Culinary Diplomacy: Bon Appétit Your Majesty Dishes

What makes Bon Appétit Your Majesty so compelling is not just the food itself, but what it represents: the collision of two worlds, the bridging of centuries, and the universal language of flavor. Ji-yeong’s dishes are acts of both rebellion and diplomacy, each one carefully crafted to navigate the treacherous waters of the royal court while staying true to her own culinary vision.

Each episode’s “course” serves as more than just a meal—it’s a chapter in a story about adaptation, creativity under constraint, and the power of food to transcend time and culture. Whether it’s the butter-enriched bibimbap that awakens forgotten memories or the improvised sous-vide that demonstrates ingenuity under pressure, these dishes remind us that cooking is as much about problem-solving and passion as it is about following tradition.

The drama’s cooking scenes are carefully crafted and visually appealing, showcasing Ji-yeong’s techniques in detail—from the way she browns butter to the careful layering of flavors in each dish. Every preparation is a dance between modern knowledge and historical limitation, between French refinement and Korean soul.

Through these Dishes from The Tyrant’s Chef, we witness how Ji-yeong uses her culinary expertise not just to survive, but to communicate, to heal, and ultimately to change the course of history, one carefully prepared course at a time.