Spicy-Sweet Korean BBQ Sauce (Ssamjang)

Made this with red miso instead of doenjang because I had it in my fridge. Worked fine with bulgogi and everyone loved it.

The Thai "Happy Boy" brand of fermented soybean paste is excellent. I usually mix equal parts - 1/4 cup rinsed with 1/4 cup full strength - to cut the saltiness - while adding extra crunchy soybeans!! To be clear: In this recipe, I would only add 1/4 cup rinsed soybeans for crunch .. maybe a small diced Serrano pepper too :) NOTE: Crucial component of this sauce is using excellent toasted sesame oil. Like Mitoku or Eden Organic - any freshly opened oil will bloom this sauce.

I Started with this basic recipe, but I was really trying to replicate the sticky sweet hot barbecue sauce that my local Korean place uses for their wings. So I added some ketchup and oyster sauce, and bumped up the gochujang and gochujaru. And then some water to thin it just a bit because it was quite thick. It is quite satisfying for my own “faux-rean” home use.

Followed exactly as written and it turned out way too salty. Almost inedible.

If you make this with miso instead of doenjang, you may find that it's too salty. While the obvious recommendation is to just use doenjang, in a pinch you can get away with reducing the proportion of miso - or adding a bit more of everything else, as I had to do!

We like making pourable sauces on hand to drizzle over stir-fried veggies. Makes work-week lunches easier and enables us to eat more veg in general -- made this sauce but watered it down enough for it to come out of a bottle. Fantastic!

I think this sauce benefitted from about a T of vinegar. Used it in Korean Pork tacos. Delicious!

I agree gochujang is pretty hard to replace. If I absolutely had to in a pinch I would mix equal parts miso, tomato ketchup and sriracha.

Also used (yellow) miso which I think was fine. Used 2 tsp gochujang which was pretty fiery but not over the top. I did increase the honey to almost 2 tsp to offset the chile. Good to refrigerate after mixing to let flavors develop, but best brought back to room temp to use.

Amazing sauce, easy to prepare - and so delicious. I chose red soybean paste, so it did not look like the picture - not sure if this what the difference was but it was delicious anyway.

I made this using miso which is very similar to the Doenjang . My husband is a beekeeper so I used our honey but any medium flavored honey will do. Very easy and very very tasty.