Taeyangcho – this just means the chiles are sun-dried. It basically implies that the pack you’re holding is very high quality. Sunchang – refers to Sunchang County which is renowned for its gochujang. All that matters is that if you want to talk about Korean cooking you need to include gochujang in that conversation. Like an anchovy and tomato paste bomb of flavor… but I digress. Gochujang is eminently more versatile and complex, I recently started mixing some in whenever I go Italian and it’s taken my pasta sauces to another level. Now, I love sriracha, not knocking them at all, but it’s more of a condiment than anything. Also, sriracha’s explosion in popularity this past decade or two has left me wondering why gochujang is still a relatively unloved and unknown monster. Gochujang is no different, if you’re OK with a sub par gochujang don’t complain when your jiggaes, fried rices, soups, sauces, what have you end up being sub par as well. Like olive oil in Italy, masa in Mexico, fish sauce in Thailand the quality of your dish hinges on the quality of a few essential, primal ingredients. Regardless of where it’s from, gochujang is serious stuff. My parents have jars of gochujang in their fridge that family members lugged over from Korea, homemade jangs made by grandmas that just had to share their batch with their church, even a couple new age gochujangs made from young hipsters in Brooklyn that my sister bought. All this to say that gochujang is essential to Korean cooking, and to Korean people. Chungjang is important as well, but since it’s mainly used in jjajangmyeon and other derivations it’s not on the same level as the Three. Part of the Holy Trinity of Korean cooking ( The Almighty Jangs as I like to call them): gochujang, doenjang (fermented soy beans), and ganjang (soy sauce), you can’t get more essential and elemental than that. The base for practically every sauce, stew, or soup, mixed into your bibimbap, tossed with your fried chicken, gochujang is to Korean cooking as butter is to French. Gochujang is the quintessential Korean ingredient spicy, fermented, sweet, rich, earthy, relegating this elemental substance to a mere condiment would be sacrilege. I usually just add it to a bowl of warm rice with different legumes and veggies.If Kimchi is the Holy Mother then gochujang is the… dharma, the sacred essence from which all things come (have to use my Religious Studies major whenever I get the chance). The most classic option will be Bibimbap. But you can cut down the liquid cus this recipe is runnier). You can use it in recipes calling for Gochujang (duh. I would say that this sauce is one of the go-with-all sauce. However, if you want it to be as smooth as possible, you can use garlic powder instead, or double the ingredients for blending better. The final product might be left with some garlic chunks, which is totally fine. All you need to do is to add all ingredients in a blender to blitz together. It’s really simple and easy to make this Gochujang sauce. And since water can be easily accessed for most people, I don’t count it as an ingredient.
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