Ssamjang-style wrapping sauce

Two jang and a handful of aromatics

Ssamjang is the thick, savoury sauce for lettuce wraps: a little goes on the rice inside the leaf. It is a mixed sauce rather than a fermented one, made by stirring two fermented Korean pastes, doenjang (soybean paste) and gochujang (red chilli paste), together with sesame, a little sweetness and raw garlic and spring onion. Both belong to jang, the foundational fermented sauces and pastes of Korea, with ganjang, soy sauce, as the third. In 2024 UNESCO inscribed the knowledge, beliefs and practices of jang-making on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Its record describes the whole communal cycle of making, storing and eating jang, passed down within families, and notes that the sauces vary from one household to the next. Jang is a practice, not one universal recipe.

That variety is why this formula is written to be tasted and adjusted. Maangchi's ssamjang explicitly lets the ratio and the sweetness vary, and two jars of paste from different makers can differ markedly in salt and sweetness. The recipe uses bought pastes. Doenjang leads at 60 g, twice the 30 g of gochujang: the soybean paste sets the savoury, salty base, and the chilli paste adds heat, colour and some sweetness of its own. If your gochujang is already sweet, cut the 15 g honey or rice syrup. If your doenjang is exceptionally salty, add water a little at a time.

The useful distinction in Korean condiments is between making a fermented base and mixing a sauce from it. Ssamjang is mixed. So are chogochujang, gochujang sharpened with vinegar and sugar into a sour-sweet dip for seafood and vegetables; ganjang-based dipping sauces, soy seasoned with vinegar, chilli, sesame or aromatics, which are not the same thing as Korean soup soy sauce; and gyeoja sauces, the sweet-sour mustard dressings covered with the mustard recipes. Making doenjang or gochujang at home is a separate project that needs control of substrate, culture, salt, temperature and handling, and neither saltiness nor a pleasant smell is a safety test for it.

Raw garlic changes the rules

The rest of the formula builds aroma and texture. Water, 15 g, loosens the two pastes into something spreadable. Toasted sesame oil (10 g) and toasted sesame seeds (5 g) add a roasted note and a little crunch. Grated garlic (5 g) and finely chopped spring onion (10 g) go in raw, for sharpness. Taste the finished sauce the way it will be eaten, with rice in a lettuce leaf. A spoonful on its own is far stronger than the mouthful it seasons and will mislead you.

Those raw aromatics change how the sauce should be kept. An unopened jar of fermented paste comes with its maker's storage instructions; a mix of pastes, water, honey and fresh garlic and onion is a new food and inherits none of them. For a longer-lasting arrangement, keep the bought pastes in their own containers and stir fresh onion and garlic only into the portion for today's meal. That keeps each ingredient under its own label; it does not make the mixed sauce keep. The formula is untested: no test kitchen, no tasting against a Korean household ssamjang, no keeping trials. Keep the mixed sauce at 4°C or colder where practical and use it within 48 hours, a convention borrowed from leftovers guidance and never a measured shelf life, or sooner if a paste's own after-opening instruction is shorter. It contains soy and sesame; check the pastes' labels for wheat.

Other published batches

Household recipes for ssamjang differ in proportion and seasoning, and none of them is a standard. Maangchi's four-serving batch uses a quarter cup of doenjang to one tablespoon of gochujang, with one green onion, one garlic clove, a quarter cup of chopped onion, two teaspoons each of honey, sesame seeds and toasted sesame oil. Beyond Kimchee gives a separate six-serving mixture that adds mirim and garlic in its own proportions. Both are mixed in a bowl and served with rice, leafy wraps, vegetables or barbecue. They differ in sweetness and in what goes in with the pastes, and neither establishes a regional master recipe. The 150 g formula on this page is a third batch, not an average of those two.

None of these recipes describes a new fermentation of the finished mixture, and the sources do not identify the microbes in the particular doenjang and gochujang used. The recipe authors give refrigerated-holding advice for their own batches; no validation study of ssamjang storage was found.

Wrapped in a leaf

The sauce belongs to ssam, the Korean practice of wrapping rice, meat or vegetables in a leaf and eating the parcel in one bite. Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism describes ssam in these terms and says its history is uncertain. The Joseon-era references it cites concern wrapping food in leaves, not the origin of ssamjang, so the sauce itself has no attested date here.