Help me identify this Korean condiment!

March 24, 2017 5:56 AM

We went for Korean food recently, and with our grill we were served a red dipping sauce - it was bright red, had a paste consistency, and tasted slightly spicy and quite salty/savoury. The waitress said it was called 'dengu', but I must have misheard as nothign comes up when I google. Any idea what this was?
posted by mippy to Food & Drink (7 answers total)

Was it gochu-jang maybe?
posted by helloimjennsco at 6:03 AM on March 24, 2017 [8 favorites]

It could have been a combination of gochujang, as linked above, and doenjang, which is fermented soybean paste (much like miso but done in a different process so it's saltier, nuttier, more... doenjangy), and possibly mixed with toasted sesame oil. Some combination of all three is really common in Korean food with all sorts of dishes. The reason I don't think it was entirely gochujang is that you say it was quite salty, and while gochujang is pretty salty it's got nothing on doenjang. I keep all three in my pantry if at all possible - they make practically anything delicious.
posted by Mizu at 6:13 AM on March 24, 2017

It sounds exactly like gochujang, but if it was a dipping sauce it probably wasn't straight gochujang - gochujang out of the tub has the consistency of pasty clay and wouldn't work as a sauce. A common dipping sauce in Korean restaurants is made of gochujang, rice vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce, and sugar, plus some other stuff; here's a recipe.

Good news is it'll be easy to replicate, gochujang is a fundamental ingredient in Korean food. You'll be able to find it any any Korean grocery store, no matter how small, and a $5 jar will last you years.
posted by Itaxpica at 6:15 AM on March 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

Also a possibility: the doenjang and gochujang-based sauce ssamjang, which is the most likely option if it was served with BBQ.
posted by Itaxpica at 6:17 AM on March 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

I think I have heard this called simply Gochu sauce, which in English sounds kind of like "Kochi."
posted by jabah at 6:31 AM on March 24, 2017

Yeah, it was either 고추장 (gochujang), 된장 (doenjang), 쌈장 (ssamjang), or 초고추장 (chogochujang).

The last one has a recipe here, and if it was sweet/tangy a bit, and came with Korean 전 jjun or pancakes, that's what's it would be. If it came with meat, it was probably ssamjang.

Keep in mind that all these sauces, like BBQ sauces, have slight variants and differences and 'secret family recipes', etc, so if you go buy one, try to find one that looks fancier/isn't the cheapest so that you'll get something that tastes better, nuanced, and interesting.
posted by suedehead at 7:59 AM on March 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

I eat homemade gochujang on everything but cake.

Here's the recipe I use. It is very thick, sweet salty fermenty and OMG.
posted by hilaryjade at 5:37 PM on March 25, 2017 [1 favorite]