The Best Seasonings for Korean BBQ: Gochujang, Doenjang, Soy Sauce, Garlic, Sesame and Pear

Korean barbecue gets its flavor less from dry spices than from a handful of pastes, sauces and fresh aromatics. Soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil and pear go into the marinade, and fermented gochujang and doenjang go into ssamjang, the thick paste for wrapping and dipping. That pear has a reputation as a tenderizer, but in one study of five fruits, it softened beef the least. Pineapple did the most.¹

At a glance

The marinade: soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil, sugar and pear

Bulgogi, thin-sliced marinated beef, is a Korean menu staple. Smithsonian Magazine notes that nearly every Korean restaurant in the US serves it one way or another.² The magazine’s history of the dish says bulgogi marinades generally include some mix of soy sauce, sugar, garlic, green onion, sesame oil and pear, and that the meat is eaten over rice or wrapped in lettuce.²

There’s no fixed ratio. Chef Peter Serpico’s recipe in the same article, for one, marinates sirloin in equal parts low-sodium soy sauce and canned pineapple juice, with sesame oil, sesame seeds, garlic, scallions and black pepper.² Notice the pineapple juice where you’d expect pear.

Does pear tenderize the meat?

Pear is widely described as a tenderizer for Korean marinades. A 2000 study in the Korean Journal of Food and Cookery Science marinated beef in sauces made with juice from each of five fruits and measured toughness. The reduction ran pineapple, then papaya, fig, kiwifruit and, smallest, pear.¹ Pineapple, papaya and fig tenderized the beef significantly more than pear and kiwifruit.¹ So in that test, pear softened the beef least of the five, and pineapple, the fruit in Serpico’s recipe, softened it most. Pear’s other job, adding sweetness, isn’t in doubt.

Soy sauce (ganjang)

Korean soy sauce, ganjang, is the liquid byproduct of making doenjang, according to Matt Rodbard’s guide to Korean jangs in Saveur. He adds that it has no added wheat.⁴ Soy sauce is the main salt in most bulgogi marinades. See soy sauce powder and, if a marinade is too salty, too much soy sauce.

Gochujang

Gochujang is a red or dark red fermented paste of grain, salt and red pepper powder.⁵ Rodbard calls it sweet, spicy and funky, the most assertive ingredient in Korean cooking, and says to use it sparingly.⁴

Pick whatever heat level you like. For barbecue it goes into glazes and into ssamjang. See gochugaru, the red pepper behind it, and gochugaru vs. gochujang.

Doenjang

Doenjang is Korean fermented soybean paste, salted and aged. Rodbard writes that its natural fermentation gives it the sharp, funky smell of a strong cheese.⁴ At the barbecue table, its main job is in ssamjang.³

Ssamjang

Ssamjang is the thick paste that goes with grilled meat. Rodbard says it’s used to glaze meats and fill lettuce wraps.⁴ Chef Hooni Kim’s recipe in Saveur combines doenjang and gochujang. It’s mainly for glazing barbecued meat or as a condiment in lettuce wraps, and it also works as a dip for raw vegetables.³

Kim’s ssamjang is mostly doenjang with a smaller share of gochujang, sweetened with rice or corn syrup and rounded out with sesame oil and seeds, onion, scallion, garlic and chopped walnuts, which are his own touch.³ The recipe says it keeps up to a month in an airtight container in the fridge.³ The name often gets translated as “spicy dipping sauce,” but ssam refers to the wrap, and we found no source for that translation.

Garlic

Garlic goes into the bulgogi marinade² and into ssamjang.³ At Korean barbecue restaurants you’ll often see whole cloves grilled alongside the meat and pickled garlic among the side dishes. See garlic, garlic powder and too much garlic.

Sesame oil and seeds

Sesame oil is a standard part of bulgogi marinades,² and both oil and seeds go into Kim’s ssamjang.³ The dark, toasted oil in Korean cooking is for flavor, not frying. Gernot Katzer notes that dark sesame oil isn’t suitable for frying unless you dilute it with another oil.⁶ Some cooks add it at the end of mixing a marinade. We found no evidence that it keeps the meat from absorbing the other liquids.

Sesame is one of the nine major food allergens in the United States.⁷ See sesame seeds, black sesame seeds and hulled vs. unhulled sesame seeds.

Perilla leaves

Katzer, who covers Japanese shiso and Korean perilla under one species, notes that the common Korean name, kkaennip, means “sesame leaf,” and that Korean cooking has found similar uses for the aromatic leaves.⁸ Wrapping grilled meat in a perilla leaf, alone or with lettuce, is common, but we found no source that makes it the traditional wrap for bulgogi. The sources we checked also don’t support the claim that perilla tastes like licorice-noted basil. See shiso and Korean mint, a different plant.

Related pages

• Korean spices, gochugaru and gochugaru substitutes
• BBQ spices for American-style rubs
• The master list of herbs and spices