I am a big fan of Korean cuisine and one of my favourite dishes is bulgogi (aka Korean BBQ beef). The beef is marinated in a tasty sauce that is sweet and salty and full of flavour! This BBQ sauce is a take on the flavours of the bulgogi marinade in BBQ sauce form! The saltiness comes from soy sauce, the sweetness from the combination of sugar, mirin, honey and grated pear, which also adds an element of fruitiness. Grated onion, garlic and ginger add a ton of flavour to the sauce along with sliced green onion. Rice vinegar adds a sour tanginess and gochujang and adds the spicy heat. Everything is simmered to let the flavours mingle before optionally straining out the solids and if you like a thicker sauce you can add some cornstarch to thicken it as it simmers. The final component is the toasted sesame oil which has such amazing aromatics.
I like to make this sauce ahead of time, store it in the fridge, and use it when ready! I like to use it on things like grilled chicken, burgers, etc., pretty much any place that you would think about using BBQ sauce!
Korean BBQ Sauce
A simple and tasty homemade Korean style BBQ sauce!
ingredients
- 1/2 cup soy sauce
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons mirin* (optional)
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1/4 cup pear (or apple), grated
- 1/4 cup onion, grated
- 1 tablespoon garlic, grated
- 1 tablespoon ginger, grated
- 1 green onion, sliced
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- 1 tablespoon gochujang*
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
directions
- Bring the soy sauce, brown sugar, honey, mirin, pear, onion, garlic, ginger, green onion, rice vinegar, gochujang, pepper, and cornstarch to simmer and cook until the sugar has dissolved into the sauce and the sauce has thickened a bit, about 5 minutes, before straining the solids out and letting it cool.
Note: Gochujang is a Korean style chili paste that can be found in the Asian/International section of a grocery store or at an Asian grocery store. Korean BBQ sauce is not always spicy and you can omit this if desired. If you cannot find gochujang, you can replace it with something like sriracha or sambal oelek.
Option: The cornstarch is added to thicken the sauce and it can be omitted.
Kevin … Glad you have some sample sauces to go with the Korean BBQ burger. Thanks, David
I absolutely love love love your recipes I was wondering do you have any for home preserving such as the barbecue sauces
Below the recipe is a list of my other BBQ sauce recipes. Any of them can be preserved, though you would have to lookup proper canning procedures for preserving.
Gosh Kevin, I haven’t been to your site for probably a couple of months because I’ve been busy with my garden. Now, looking for some recipes with which to utilize my produce, I was shocked to find all these distracting flashing, moving ads and videos. Worse of all, when I made a copy of this fabulous-looking korean BBQ sauce, your print option didn’t give me any option to omit any parts of the page, like the photo, maybe notes, doubling amounts, or nutritional information. I WAS able to print in black and white only, but I was really dismayed to see that the ad situated in the center of the recipe printed as well! Come on, man, I know you can set the print options up better than this! I keep spiral notebooks of recipes and I’d sure like to keep utilizing yours, but ink doesn’t grow on trees, you know!
The red “Print Recipe” button in the middle of the recipe will print just the recipe, usually in a single page, without any ads.