Jang as the Grammar of the Cuisine

Jang (장), the family of fermented soybean and chilli seasonings, is the oldest organising principle of the Korean table and rests on the settled history of soybean cultivation and fermentation on the peninsula. It is recorded in the Joseon court kitchen and in the household books that followed, among them the Eumsik Dimibang of Lady Jang Gye-hyang (1670) and the Gyuhap Chongseo of Lady Bingheogak Yi (1809), and it survives in every region from Gyeonggi to Jeju.

The three principal jang are ganjang (soy sauce), doenjang (soybean paste) and gochujang (chilli paste), and together they do for Korean cooking what stock, salt and fat do for the French kitchen: they set the base on which a dish is built. Meju, the dried and fermented soybean block, is the common ancestor. Ganjang is the liquid drawn from the brine in which meju matures, and doenjang is the solid that remains. Gochujang is a later member of the family, made by combining fermented soybean with gochugaru, the ground Korean chilli (Capsicum annuum), and a starch, usually glutinous rice. The chilli reached the peninsula only in the Joseon period, and its absorption into the jang tradition shows how the cuisine takes in a new ingredient by fitting it to an existing method. Maangchi, in Real Korean Cooking, treats these pastes as the pantry from which the everyday dishes follow: the soup and stew of doenjang, the seasoned vegetable, the braise in ganjang, the dipping and mixing sauces of gochujang. Kimchi stands beside jang as the second part of the grammar. Where jang seasons, kimchi preserves and provides the sour, salted, pungent counterpoint at every meal. Napa cabbage (Brassica rapa subsp. pekinensis) and Korean radish (Raphanus sativus) are the commonest vegetables, salted, seasoned and fermented, and the autumn making of kimchi in quantity for the winter belongs to the household calendar. Salted fish sauces and shellfish pastes (jeotgal) give the regional variation, heavier on the coasts and lighter inland, and so the same method speaks in different dialects from Seoul and Gyeonggi to Jeolla, Gyeongsang, Gangwon and Jeju. The banchan principle follows from this. A Korean meal is built around cooked rice and soup, and the side dishes are chosen to set salt against freshness, fermented against fresh, and cooked against raw, with jang and kimchi as the fixed points. The court kitchen of Joseon elaborated the arrangement in the number and refinement of dishes, while the household and the temple kept it plain. Temple cooking, which excludes meat, fish and the pungent alliums, relies on jang, perilla (Perilla frutescens), sesame and fermented vegetables for depth, and shows how much of the cuisine's savour comes from fermentation and not from animal ingredients. The twentieth century strained the tradition. Under Japanese rule (1910–1945) the production of food was reshaped to the needs of the colonial economy, and commercial soy sauce and miso-style products entered Korean households alongside the home-made jang. The war (1950–1953) and the division of the peninsula scattered families and cut the North from the southern regions, and the dislocation and scarcity of those years affected household fermentation as they did every other domestic craft. In the decades of rebuilding, factory-made gochujang and doenjang spread through the South, while the home jang survived chiefly in rural households and in the keeping of older cooks. The 1988 Seoul Olympics brought the cuisine before an international audience, and the export that followed, through the diaspora kitchens of Los Angeles, New York and Hawaii, carried jang and kimchi as its recognisable signature. Maangchi's books belong to that movement, setting out the pastes and their uses for a cook working far from a Korean market. What reaches the cook abroad is the same grammar: a small number of fermented seasonings, learnt first, from which the rest of the table can be read.

The taste of jang is salt first, then the deep savour of fermented soybean, with gochujang adding the sweetness of rice and the heat of the chilli. At table these are set against the sourness of kimchi, the freshness of dressed vegetables and the plainness of rice, so that each mouthful is balanced by the next. The seasoning is added in stages, with ganjang for clear soups, doenjang for the stew and gochujang for the sauce, according to the weight the dish requires.