For the latest video in their excellent Flavor series, the always compelling Great Big Story went to the village of Sunchang in South Korea to get the skinny on one of our favourite Korean accompaniments, gochujang:
In Korea, the secret sauce has long been gochujang. From kimchi to bibimbap to Korean BBQ, gochujang is a favorite among chefs everywhere, and is poised to soon become as big as Sriracha. In Korea, no one makes it better than Seo Youngsoon. She’s been stirring up the stuff for the past 40 years, using traditional techniques passed down from generation to generation. By teaching others how to make the sauce using traditional methods, she is helping preserve a recipe that epitomizes Korean gastronomy and culture.
You can find the impactful stuff at several supermarkets (eg. T&T) and incorporated into the menus of many Korean restaurants in the Lower Mainland. For especially interesting treatments of it, chefs Clement Chan (Torafuku) and Wesley Young (Pidgin) have been known to employ it with invariably interesting and delicious results.
It saddens me to no end that Costco came out with this amazing sauce and then stopped carrying it.
I need it back in my life and no one has it! No, T&T does not have it. I’ve asked. I’ve tried ordering it online but they won’t ship it to Canada.
I started eating Machu Wok simply because they had a special chicken with it for a limited time… Machu Wok man!
I’m desperate for a real bottle of it, not the paste…the sauce.
My coworkers are sick of me talking about this amazing sauce none of them have heard of and assume I’m a hipster, I shave dammit and none of my pants cinch at the bottom.