Doenjang

Korea's fermented soybean paste and the ganjang drawn off with it: brick-dried meju, brined in a crock, and separated after months into a paste and a soy sauce

Origin: Seoul & Korea

From the journey of Soy.

Doenjang is fermented soybean paste, and the traditional method makes it and Korea's soy sauce, ganjang, in the same crock at the same time. Boiled soybeans are pounded and formed into bricks called meju, which are dried and hung under the eaves for weeks to be colonised by wild moulds and bacteria from the air and the rice straw they are tied with. The bricks then go into a crock of salt brine for two or three months. What is drawn off as liquid is ganjang; what is left in the crock is broken up, packed down, and aged on as doenjang. One process, two products, and the split is the reason Korean soy paste and Korean soy sauce taste like relatives in a way that Japanese miso and shoyu, brewed separately, do not. The distinction from Japanese miso is worth stating plainly. Miso is inoculated with cultivated Aspergillus oryzae and usually contains rice or barley koji; traditional doenjang is soybean alone, fermented by whatever the air brings, principally Bacillus subtilis. That gives it a rougher, deeper, more pungent character and a coarser texture with whole bean fragments in it. A Korean cook will not accept miso as a substitute in doenjang jjigae, and is right not to. The crocks, onggi, are unglazed earthenware and breathe through the clay, and the terrace of crocks behind a house, the jangdokdae, was for centuries the measure of a household. Making the year's paste, jang damgeugi, is done in late winter, and UNESCO inscribed the Korean practice of making and sharing jang on its intangible cultural heritage list in 2024. What follows is the household method at a workable scale, using bought meju, which is how most Korean families now begin.

Ingredients

Ferment

  • 2 kg dried meju blocks

Brine

  • 8 litres water
  • 1.6 kg coarse sea salt
  • 1 egg, for testing the brine

Crock

  • 5 dried red chillies
  • 3 lumps of charcoal
  • 2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

Equipment

  • 1 large unglazed onggi crock or wide-mouthed glass jar
  • 2 clean glass jars for the ganjang

Method

  1. Scrub the meju blocks under running water with a stiff brush to take off the surface mould, then dry them in the sun for a day.
  2. Some surface mould is correct and expected; what you are removing is loose growth and dust, not the ferment itself.
  3. Dissolve the salt in the water and let the brine settle overnight, then pour it off the sediment.
  4. Test it by floating the egg: it should sit with a coin-sized disc of shell above the surface. Weaker brine than this will spoil.
  5. Put the meju into the sterilised crock, pour the brine over so the blocks float clear of the bottom, and lay the chillies on top.
  6. Pass the charcoal through a flame until it glows, drop it in, and scatter the sesame seeds over. These are traditional and are held to draw off odours and impurities.
  7. Cover the mouth with muslin and put the lid on loosely. Open it to the sun on dry days and close it before evening and in rain.
  8. Leave for sixty to ninety days at cool room temperature.
  9. Now separate the two: strain off the liquid, which is raw ganjang, and set the softened solids aside.
  10. Boil the ganjang for twenty minutes, skimming, then cool it and bottle it. Boiling stops the ferment and is what makes it keep.
  11. Break the solids up thoroughly by hand, mashing out any hard cores, and pack them down hard into a clean crock, pressing out every air pocket.
  12. Sprinkle salt across the surface, cover with muslin, and age in a cool place for at least six months, opening it to the sun on fine days. It darkens from tan to deep brown, and is ready when it smells sharply savoury rather than raw.

Notes

Meju blocks are sold dried by Korean grocers and are the practical starting point; making them from scratch means boiling, pounding, moulding, and hanging soybeans for six weeks before this recipe begins. The egg float is the brine test and is worth doing properly, since under-salted brine is the usual cause of spoilage. Press every air pocket out when packing the paste. White surface film is normal and is scraped off; fuzzy coloured mould is not, and means the paste was packed loosely or the crock was wet. The finished doenjang is the base of doenjang jjigae, of ssamjang when mixed with gochujang, and of the seasoning of blanched vegetables; the ganjang drawn from it is used in soups where a lighter, saltier soy is wanted.

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