Korean Job Discussion Forums

[IncognitoHFX]

So I've been eating a lot of different Korean sauces with my meals and forgetting their names. I haven't been nearly as creative as I should have been thanks to cheap, affordable restaurants that always had premade meals for me.

Lately, however, as it has been much more expensive to send money home to pay loans, I have begun cooking a lot of food at home for myself. Therefore, I've been looking at various recipes.

One of my favourite things to eat, which is usually a Korean homemade meal, is the leaves with tofu, assorted mountain vegetables and sauces/spices. It's quite possibly the tastiest vegetarian thing ever.

I want to buy the ingredients and make it at home as it's very easy to do, but I'm having trouble finding the brown-bean sauce that usually compliments this. My co-workers said that it can't be bought in stores, but I suspect that they only make it at home anyway and wouldn't know. It's a bean and soy sauce mixture that is mildly spicy and most likely comes in those little plastic tubs. What's it called?

Also, what are some other foods I should try at home? My Korean is getting pretty good but I never bothered with the names of obscure, vegetarian Korean side dishes and sauces as they were usually just complimentary stuff in restaurants. Now that I'm cooking I need to know their names.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

[blurgalurgalurga]

Uhh...dwenjang? Tastes like miso?
If that's what you're on about, it's a fermented soybean paste that you mix with water and stuff to make a broth. It's served as a side-sauce sometimes in meat restaurants too.
There's different kinds of it: some smells like feet, others smell like miso.
If it ain't that, I dunno.

[Hyeon Een]

I'm not sure exactly what you're eating, but I'd guess the sauce is a kind of doenjang. Some of the homemade varieties taste totally different to the store-bought kind.

Is the rice mixed with barley? If so the meal you're talking about is probably bori-bap. That usually contains a big assortment of vegetables (including the 'mountain' ones ) and is usually served with a kind of doenjang. The doenjang is usually served almost like a soup (though Koreans won't let you eat it like that because they'll say it's too salty) but you mix it in with the boribap. The first coupla times I had doenjang like that I thought it was a different bean based sauce.. but it wasn't.

I'm not sure if this helped or not..

[victorology]

Is it the thick sauce you either put in your vegetable wrap. Or you'll see Koreans take a lettuce leaf or pepper and dip it in before eating?

It's called 쌈장. ssam-jang.

[Hyeon Een]

[IncognitoHFX]

[Hyeon Een]

[Fishead soup]

Boshintang

[IncognitoHFX]