JANG - THE LIFE FORCE BEHIND KOREAN CUISINE

Jang fermented sauces or pastes are the life force behind Korean cuisine and tradition, making the food from this wonderful country so unique in flavour and significant within its historical roots.

What is Jang made from?

Jang can be made from many different ingredients such as fish (eojang), meat (yukjang) and also soybeans (dujang).  Dujang is probably Korea’s most popular food export found all around the world.
It is a traditional culinary ingredient that undertakes a timely process performed mainly by women.  However, to explore the importance of jang, we must first understand soybeans, the building blocks on which it is created.

The Importance of Soybeans in Asian Culture

Soybeans have been cultivated for over 5,000 years and were a prevalent part of the Dongyi Tribes, that once inhabited China’s northeast and east, Korean Peninsula and Japan. Excavated evidence of carbonized soybeans leading back The Bronze Age provides an insight into the Korean diet many years ago.

Soybean farmers in Xiangfan, in central China's Hubei province.
Credit: NPR/Reuters /Landov

Soybeans have always played an important part in the Asian diet, being a primary source of protein and nutrition. The Western world used it for animal feed due to its low cost and high nutritional content before taking some time to introduce it to the human diet.  In both natural and fermented forms, soybean food products today are common in many countries around the world.

There are over 2500 strains of soybeans grown worldwide, with each strain being chosen for a large variety of both fermented and non-fermented products. Soybean oil, soy milk, and tofu are the most common non-fermented soybean products found on the market today.

The process of fermenting foods has been around for 10,000 years to preserve ingredients for when the seasons changed and food was sparse, but it also can create higher nutritional content in food products through the growth of bacteria and microorganisms. When fermenting soybeans, certain chemical inhibitors are removed allowing absorption of nutrients more easily. Fermentation and the result of different varieties of dujang in Korean cuisine have proven to be both complex in flavour and have been proven in studies to help fight cancer, diabetes and to prevent obesity.

There are four main types of soy jang in Korean cuisine that vary in complexity of taste and texture. The simplest of the soy jangs is Chungkukjang. It is made by boiling soybeans and allowing them to ferment over a few days at a temperature averaging around 30°C, creating a bacteria which results in a sticky, pungent dish similar to Japanese natto.

The three other soybean jangs undergo a more complicated, timely process allowing the final products to be complex, extremely nutritious and full of umami. The base of these jangs is developed from a soy block called meju. Meju is made at different times of the year depending on the region and what the meju will be eventually used for. Doenjang and Ganjang meju is usually made at the end of Autumn, around early November yet it varies according to the lunar calendar.

Meju bricks tied with rice stalks. Credit: Jason Lang

There are three steps this type of meju will undergo before resulting in the final product.
The soybeans are soaked and boiled for around 5-6 hours before being drained, crushed and shaped into large bricks.

Traditionally these soybean ‘bricks’ are wrapped in rice stalks like a ribbon around a parcel, hung and aged naturally for 1-2 months. This process is now sometimes sped up in a controlled temperature environment cutting down the aging time to about 15 days at around 12°C-15°C. Bacteria is transferred through the rice stalks and asperlligus mould starts to grow on the meju.

The rice stalks are removed from the meju and the blocks are then placed in large earthenware pots known as Jangdok (or onggi) where they ferment for a further 1-2 months in a saltwater solution. The liquid and paste are then separated to age further to create doenjang (bean paste) and ganjang (soy sauce).

GANGJANG (Soy Sauce)

Ganjang can be divided into three categories depending on complexity, the time it takes to ferment and what dishes it is best used in. The longer the aging process, the more complexity the gangjang takes on.
Guk-ganjang is the traditional Korean soy sauce using only meju, water and salt. The flavour variances of this soy sauce will depends on the aging process and usually, this type is used for soups.
Yang-jo- gangjang is a soy sauce naturally processed with the addition of wheat, resulting in a more Japanese style soy sauce that is slightly sweeter. 
Jin-ganjang is a mixed soy sauce made of a naturally produced yang-jo-jang and a chemically produced gangjang. It comes at a cheaper price, however, the flavour profile is not as complex. 

DOENJANG (Soybean paste)

Doenjang is the byproduct of soy sauce production. The broken-down meju is added to an earthenware pot and allowed to ferment for a minimum of 6 months. Doenjang has a similar texture to miso, however, it is less sweet and more of a savoury base to use in soups.

Doenjang in its purist form contains only fermented soybeans and a small amount of brine. Chillies and jujubes (Chinese dates) may also be added. Koji or wheat is sometimes added to the fermentation process in more commercial varieties of doenjang, resulting in a sweeter flavour. As well as being used for its culinary purposes, Doenjang has been taken medicinally from as early as the 1600s to reduce blood pressure and ease allergies.

GOCHUJANG (soybean chilli paste)

This spicy, sweet red pepper paste is made from a combination of Korean chilli powder, glutinous rice, and ground meju, salt, kanjang and sometimes malt water. Gochu, the Korean chilli, is only grown in the Korean Peninsula and is essential in making Korea’s most popular food exports – kimchi and gochujang. 

The meju in gochujang accounts for 80-90% of the final product and contains a small amount of wheat creating a slight sweetness to the sauce. The gochujang meju is fermented for around 2-3 months before it is ground into a powder. All the Gochujang ingredients are mixed together thoroughly before being placed in earthenware pots to ferment from 6 months or more.

Gochujang preparation. Credit: Michelle K Min

The rice starches allow saccharification to take place, enabling the gochujang to develop a unique sweetness with a mouthful of umami while developing some wonderfully natural bacteria, yeast, and fungus over time.

Korean dujangs display such complexities with the simplest of ingredients. All that is needed are soybeans, salt, chilli, a little bit of heat and time to create such wonderfully umami-rich products. They are creations that have been mastered over many years and are strongly embedded into Korean cuisine and culture that will, hopefully, last a lifetime.

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MORE FOOD HISTORY STORIES BELOW.

Bread - A Short History

We have stopped travelling and wandering the globe (just for now) and are getting back to the basics.

From what I can see, almost everyone seems to be hunkering down at home and learning the wonderfully satisfying craft of baking – and I am so proud of you! From complex sourdoughs to banana bread and simple scones, bread, in any form is a true joy to make and a delight to eat.

Credit; Amaia Arranz-Ortaegui (npr.org)

An Everyday Staple - Bread

Bread has walked hand in hand with humans for over 14,000 years. The 2018 discovery of charred bread found at the site of Natufians in Northeastern Jordon revealed that these hunter-gatherer people settled down to make bread with wild cereals prior to exploring farming.

The Natufian culture existed in Epipaleolithic times, a period which rested in between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic eras. It was within the Neolithic period that the first agricultural revolution took place and people started to settle and farm rather than wander the land for food

Artisan Bread

Sourdough and artisan breads are products that people are now making and eating more of. We are embracing the technique of making our own leaveners which can be traced back to the ancient Egyptians who were also into beer brewing as depicted in paintings of that time. The story of the original creation of sourdough loosely talks about dough being left out as wild yeast in the air drifted into the mix. The bread baked from this dough was lighter, fluffier and tasted better.

A simple starter or sponge of flour and water, time and tangy fermentation are the building blocks of a naturally leavened bread. Throughout the world many cultures have been fermenting dough with local grains long before it was documented such as injera of Ethiopia made with fermented teff flour and kisra, a Sudanese bread made from fermented sorghum.

The process of bread making journeyed from Egypt to Greece, whose cuisine comprises of over 70 different types of bread both sweet and savoury, made from a variety of grains. The Greeks were the first real artisan bakers and bread was and is such a strong part of their culture.

As with many skills and ideas, the Romans learnt the art of bread making from the Greeks and mastered the art of kneading and developing new baking techniques, including the fermentation of grape juice, skins and all, which sped up the fermentation process.

Female Bakers, Thebes, Boetia, 6th Century BC (Louvre, Paris)
Credit; Bridgeman Images/Greece-is.com

Leading up to the discovery of yeast and how it reacted, barm, a foam that forms on the top of beer during fermentation was included in the process of baking bread, acting as a leavener and cutting down some time as opposed to making a starter from scratch. Bakers could not always be reliant on breweries for their barm so continued to make sourdough. In Austria, mass-produced yeast was developed by chemists, taken from the tops of fermenting brew, washed, dried and then pressed into cakes. Unfortunately, shortcuts were made and the product became bulked up with fillers.

The Invention of Dried Yeast

Charles Fleischmann and his brother Maximillian who were managing their family’s distillery in Vienna, travelled to the United States with a baker’s yeast they had been working on.

The brothers paired with James Gaff, a local distiller, to found the Fleischmann Yeast Company, based in Cincinnati in 1868. The yeast was compressed into small ready to use cakes and wrapped in foil. This was the beginning of the worlds first commercialized yeast that allowed people to bake with more consistency and less time.

The development of fresh yeast available to all was an achievement but the invention of dried yeast was a revolution. This new Active Dry Yeast did not need refrigeration and proved to come in handy for the US troops during WWII, enabling them to make their own bread in a small amount of time.

Fleischmann’s Yeast Poster
Credit; Science History Institute

The convenience of baking a faster-rising loaf of bread was a genius invention however did eventually lead to the downfall of quality nutrient-dense bread. Originally, flour was made by stone grinding the whole wheat kernel, resulting in whole wheat flour that contained the bran, germ and endosperm This flour was then simply sifted to remove any larger particles. The development of the steel roller mill sped up the process of milling wheat, however with this new process, the grain was separated resulting in a less nutritionally dense flour. It was a fast and efficient way to make larger volumes of flour and coincided with the Industrial Revolution of the 1900s.

Commercial Bakery.
Photograph: Fritz Goro/LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Photograph: Fritz Goro/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images/TheGuardian)

With the lack of nutrition in this mass-produced flour, artificial vitamins and minerals were then added after it had been processed. The industrialization of bread was a lengthy development, facing the challenge of creating a stable food product that could last for more than a few days. Enter the introduction of chemicals and stabilisers to our once healthy loaf of bread. With loaves of bread all white, sliced, and readily available, people stopped baking at home and started buying this ‘enriched bread’ along with those horrid yet ingenious TV dinners.

Image; The Bakehaus, Singapore

However, all is not lost. We are turning back to old school traditions and hopefully realizing that food is the key to disease prevention and the cheapest medicine one can find. Sourdough is now trendy again - more than ever, but it can come at a high price if you compare it to your average loaf of bread at the market, yet it is higher in nutrition due to the long fermentation process and is much more satisfying to eat and digest.

Good sourdough takes time and effort or money but if you have the budget - it is totally worth it. Check out these The Bakehaus Loaves!!

Time is something we have a lot of these days, so have a go at making a sourdough but but if it seems all to troublesome you can always try baking a regular yeasted loaf with stone milled, organic flour. There are so many simple breads that take an hour or two to make. Like pita bread, damper or even scones - the possibilities really are endless!

Flex your baking skills, explore this extremely therapeutic hobby and always use the best quality flour your budget can allow. It will make all the difference. Honestly, trust me.