Ingredient

Doenjang

Doenjang is Korean fermented soya bean paste — the savoury backbone of a great deal of Korean home cooking, and a chunkier, funkier, more assertive thing than the miso it is usually compared to. It is made from beans alone, with no grain, and that single difference accounts for most of the character.

What it is, and how it is made

Soya beans are cooked, crushed and formed into blocks called meju, which are hung to dry and left to be colonised by wild moulds and bacteria from the air. The blocks are then submerged in salt brine for months.

What happens next is the thing that makes doenjang unusual: the brine and the solids are separated. The liquid becomes Korean soy sauce (ganjang); the solids are packed down and aged further, and those become doenjang. Two products, one process, and the paste is what is left after the liquid has been taken away — which is part of why it is so concentrated.

Traditional doenjang uses wild cultures rather than an inoculated one, and ages in earthenware outdoors. Commercial doenjang is usually made with a controlled culture and is milder and more consistent for it.

Doenjang against miso

The comparison is inevitable and it obscures real differences.

What is in it

Doenjang: soya beans and salt, essentially. Miso: soya beans, salt, and a grain — rice or barley — inoculated with koji.

Sweetness

The grain in miso ferments into sugars, so miso is noticeably sweeter. Doenjang has almost none of that and reads as straightforwardly salty and savoury.

Strength

Doenjang is funkier, more pungent and more assertive. Miso, especially white miso, is rounder and gentler.

Texture

Doenjang is coarser, often with visible pieces of bean. Miso is smooth.

Substituting

Miso for doenjang works but gives you a milder, sweeter dish — use a red or barley miso rather than white, and expect to add salt. Doenjang for miso in a delicate Japanese dish will dominate it.

How to use it

• **In *doenjang jjigae*** — the everyday Korean stew of paste, stock, tofu, courgette, potato, onion and often a little meat or anchovy. This is what it is for, more than anything else.
• **In *ssamjang***, the dipping paste for lettuce wraps: doenjang and gochujang together with sesame oil, garlic and spring onion. The two pastes are a classic pairing, savoury against sweet-hot.
• Whisked into soups and broths in small amounts, as a savoury base in the way stock or anchovy might be used elsewhere.
• In a marinade for grilled meat or aubergine, thinned with sesame oil, garlic and a little sugar.
• As a seasoning for blanched vegetables — spinach, bean sprouts, chard — dressed with a little paste, sesame oil and garlic.
• Add it to liquid off a hard boil. Prolonged furious boiling flattens the aroma, which is the same advice that applies to miso.
• Taste before salting anything it is in. It is very salty.

Buying and keeping it

Sold in tubs in Korean and East Asian grocers and increasingly in supermarkets. Colour ranges from light brown to dark chocolate, and darker generally means longer aged, stronger and funkier.

Traditionally made (jaeraesik) doenjang is coarser, more variable and considerably more pungent; commercial doenjang is smoother and milder. If your first doenjang is a traditional one and it startles you, that is not a mistake in the tub.

It keeps in the fridge more or less indefinitely — the salt sees to that. It will darken and deepen over time. Press the surface flat and keep it covered, and it is fine.

Common questions