Primer on Korean Sauces

Why soy sauce is called soy sauce

When I was growing up in a small town in southern part of South Korea, we had a dedicated section of the house that stored a whole bunch of earthenware pots called jang-dok (장독).

The platform on which these pots stand is called jang-dok-dae (장독대). These have become somewhat of a rarity these days but only a few decades ago (i.e. when I was little), every household had a version of this, no matter how rich or poor you were. We’ll get back to this in a bit.

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Let’s define what I mean by Korean “sauce” before we continue. It’s not really a sauce in the Western sense, it’s closer to a “condiment” but from here on out, I’ll use the untranslatable Korean word jang, (장, 醬).

In Korean dictionary, jang is a word to describe a food item that was derived from fermenting soybeans using appropriate amount of salt and having it interact with bacteria which can be stored for years and decades, even, to develop flavor. Usually, jang refers to 3 different types in Korea—gahn-jang (간장), dwaen-jang (된장), and go-chu-jang (고추장).

First, the mother of all jangs, gahn-jang, or soy sauce. Ever wonder why they call it the “soy” sauce? It’s a very long and complicated process, but the world’s most popular condiment is made from soybeans.

You may have never seen what soybeans look like, but as you can see here, they’re beige/light brown and round/slightly oval shape. In Korea, we call this 콩 (cohng). The most popular use of the soybeans? Making doo-boo (두부). Or, tofu (Japanese word). After going through the boiling process until the beans are easily breakable by hand, you shape them into rectangular cubes the size of a brick. This is called 메주 (meh-joo).

chances are you’ve never seen rice in its plant form, right? after the rice has been harvested, the remaining straw is then dried and used in multiple ways. it pretty much looks like hay.

The meh-joo then MUST come in contact with rice straw (usually tied like the above and hung under the cheo-mah) and be left to dry and age for a few months during winter. Why rice straw? It contains the bacillus subtilis, a beneficial bacterium that lives in rice plants that help break down soybean protein chains and develop a deep flavor.

After meh-joo dries out in the bitter cold months of Korean winter, the surface is cleaned and submerged in salt water in a jang-dok. Almost always, a few blocks of charcoal are also placed in the jang-dok for filtering and purifying purposes. This mixture of meh-joo and salt water is then covered and left alone for at least 3 to 6 months for fermentation.

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Simplified description this is, but I remember my grandmother go through somewhat of sacred rituals when she used to make the jang. Cleansing one’s own hair and body was given, then the jang-dok had to be cleaned and sanitized in a very particular way, followed by a meticulous picking of the soybeans, and after everything is ready, she would bow to the jang-dok and pray to the jang gods for the good and auspicious fermentation. (It can go bad for unknown reasons.)

This is how important the jang-making used to be for every household. There is an old Korean adage that goes…

If the family’s jang flavor changes, it foretells the demise of that family. (장맛이 변하면 집안이 망한다.)

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Getting back to the process itself, as meh-joo interacts with the salt water within the jang-dok, the liquid slowly starts to turn brown/blackish, like the soy sauce color that you know of. After about 6 months, charcoal and chili peppers are removed and the meh-joo/salt water mixture is filtered through a fine cloth sieve.

The liquid is filtered a few more times and that becomes the soy sauce.

The meh-joo solids left in the sieve after filtering? That’s dwaen-jang (된장). Not even the Korean natives know that soy sauce and the soybean paste (dwaen-jang) come from the same source. For some of you Korean readers, I’ll bet you probably didn’t know that. The Japanese version of dwaen-jang is what you know as miso.

Gochu-jang is a Korean chili paste. Gochu (고추) is thus chili peppers.

The well-ripened gochu (bright red ones) is dried completely before they’re pulverized into fine powder. Then, the chili powder (고추가루) is mixed with sweet rice powder (찹쌀가루), meh-joo powder, (homemade) soy sauce, molasses, and grain syrup and left to age for a few months in (what else but) a jang-dok.

Korean gochu-jang is very unique in its flavor—just the right amount of kick, no funky after-taste, and subtle sweetness. So much so, it’s making its way into the Americana as well. Shake Shack even introduced a Korean style fried chicken sandwich that has “gochu-jang” glaze.

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We’ve briefly looked at how the Korean gahn-jang, dwaen-jang, and gochu-jang are made. The quality of the ingredients is the most important thing, needless to say, but equally as important is the jang-dok, or just “dok.” These earthenware containers can be huge, like 4 feet tall (~ 120 centimeters). At that point, you can’t really call that a “pot” or “jar” anymore, right? The way these dok’s are made is what helps the jang develop their deep flavors. Although no water can seep through it, the dok actually breathes in and out tiny amounts of outside air, which plays a considerable role in the fermentation process.

Whatever Korea was able to gain in economic power in the past few decades, we’ve lost a lot in the tradition, culture, and heritage. The modernization and urbanization efforts of the 1970s brought about a massive eradication of these jang-dok-dae in each household. What used to be a family tradition of making jang every year has all but disappeared, and everything is mass-manufactured and store bought.

The good news is that they’re slowly coming back, as you see in this picture, in the form of jang-dok farm, if you will, where families that live in high-rise apartment buildings in Seoul can own a few jang-doks at places such as this. But, you do have to travel to the countryside to visit these sites, and they’ve become something of a tourist destination.

In a final thought, do foods taste different when you use these homemade jang? Yes. Without question.