Maple Gochujang Marinade

Umami, rich and sticky, slightly sweet, put-it-on anything marinade

Welcome to the recipe feature! I’ll be featuring a recipe of some kind twice a month. My focus will be on meat - whether it’s a technique you can apply to multiple proteins, a complete dish, a favorite from my cookbook collection, or a marinade, like today!

Some of you might be familiar with this flavor combination from the beef jerky we sold at farmers markets in Chicago last year. For jerky, we sliced lean cuts of beef about a 1/4 inch thick on a meat slicer and marinated them in this mixture for about 12 hours before dehydrating them. But this mix goes well on a variety of proteins: use it to marinate beef skewers, a whole spatchcocked chicken, as a glaze for salmon, or give jerky making a shot! This would also work well with tofu.

One important note - this marinade is relatively high in sugar. To avoid burning, you will want to consider the size of the piece of the meat and the total cook time for your desired doneness. If you are roasting or grilling a spatchcocked chicken, marinate it for no more than a few hours, and cook it skin-side up for the majority of the cook time. You can flip it at the end to get some crisping action - the sugar in the marinade will help the skin brown and crisp quickly, but if you cook it skin side down the whole time it will burn. If you are doing beef skewers or any smaller pieces of protein, start on the indirect or low heat side of the grill for a few minutes to get them up to about 100 degrees, then finish them over higher heat for texture and caramelization.

Maple Gochujang Marinade:

1 cup (265g) tamari or soy sauce

1/4 cup (68g) worcestershire sauce

70g maple syrup

42g honey

30g gochujang (Korean chili paste. Different brands have different heat levels, I use a mild one)

40g yellow onion (about 1/4 of a small yellow onion)

15g garlic cloves (about 3 medium sized cloves)

20g gochugaru (Korean chili flake)

A pinch of crushed red pepper flakes

In a blender or food processor, combine Worcestershire sauce, gochujang, maple syrup, honey, onion, garlic, gochugaru, and red pepper flake. Blend until there are no big chunks of garlic and onion, and the sauce is well combined (at least 1 minute, on medium/med-high speed). Add tamari, pulse to combine, then blend 30 seconds to one minute until smooth (the marinade will always have some texture from the paste, chili flakes, and fresh onion and garlic, that’s ok!). The marinade keeps refrigerated for up to a month.