I have been working to slowly but surely use all the meat in our freezer up before our next Costco run that is coming up soon. I defrosted some ground beef and decided that I’d make bibimbap this week, especially since as I was going through my pantry, I realized I had purchased a Trader Joe’s brand gochuchang sauce. And I really wanted to finally open and use it. The reason I got this gochuchang was that this is the very first gochuchang I’ve ever purchased that did not have either corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup in it. When I used to go down the entire aisle at HMart or other Korean markets, a gochuchang paste that had neither of these corn-based ingredients was simply nonexistent. And I really wanted to use gochuchang, so I felt like I had no choice but to settle on one of these versions, so I’d just pick the one that got the highest ratings. Corn syrup is pretty prevalent in Korean-made products since it’s cheap and gives the gochuchang an attractive, shiny glaze. It also acts as a stabilizer in sauces and processed foods. The Koreans were likely heavily influenced by Americans in using this cheap ingredient, and so it became a thing.

So now when you see modern, new-age independent Korean food companies rolling out new products, you can see immediately that they reject corn syrup/HFCS and proudly state on their label, product, banner, or website that they use real sugar and no corn syrup-type ingredients. You also see these items marked up quite a bit since obviously, real cane sugar is much more expensive than its crappy corn-based substitutes.

Anyway, so I used the gochuang paste in my bibimbap sauce tonight. I mixed it with some sesame oil, sugar, water, roasted sesame seeds, apple cider vinegar, and garlic. Once you combine these simple ingredients together, you get the magic of a gochuchang-based bibimbap sauce. Bibimbap, aka “mixed rice,” is always satisfying because of all the different flavors and textures of the various vegetables and protein, all pulled together with the sweet-savory bibimbap sauce.

I asked Chris what he thought of the bibimbap, and he said it was good, but noted that he thought he might have liked the previous gochuchang-based sauce I made more.

“That’s the one with the corn syrup!” I said. “This is the first bibimbap sauce with a gochuchang that has no HFCS or corn syrup!”

I guess the moral of the story is: Chris likes corn syrup. 🙂