Gochugaru

• gochugaru고춧가루

  Korean

  Literally chilli powder, but it means the coarse Korean flake specifically. Substituting cayenne changes both the heat and the colour.

Fruity, mildly sweet and gently smoky, with a warm rounded heat that builds slowly and never spikes. The absence of bitterness is as distinctive as the heat: with the seeds gone there is nothing sharp in it, which is what allows it to be used in the quantities kimchi demands.

Fruity and faintly sweet, with a sun-dried, almost raisin-like quality in good Korean product and very little of the acrid note of hotter chillies.

A deep, slightly muted brick red — vivid but not fluorescent. A dull brown cast means old or badly dried product; an unnaturally bright red is a reason to be suspicious rather than pleased.

Slightly soft and faintly damp to the touch rather than dry and papery — good gochugaru holds a little moisture and clumps gently when pressed. Crushed red pepper flakes never do this, which makes it the quickest way to tell the two apart by hand.

• Capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin — The pungency, at modest concentrations. Most of what carried them — the placental tissue — is removed before milling.
• Capsanthin and capsorubin — The carotenoids responsible for the red colour. They are what fades under light and warmth, which is why gochugaru goes brown before it goes bland.

Mostly it is stirred in rather than cooked first — into a kimchi paste raw, into a stew as it simmers, into a marinade. Where it is bloomed in oil, keep the heat moderate and the time short: it scorches faster than a hotter, drier chilli and scorched gochugaru is bitter and brown. If you are substituting, substitute downward in quantity and expect to lose the colour: crushed red pepper flakes at gochugaru quantities are inedible, and at their own quantities leave the dish pale.

Kimchi above all, where it is used in quantities no other chilli product in this dataset approaches and where its mildness is a precondition rather than a preference. Beyond that: tteokbokki, stews such as kimchi jjigae and sundubu, marinades for grilled meat, and dressings and sauces where its colour does as much work as its heat. It sits naturally with garlic, ginger, spring onion, soy, fish sauce and toasted sesame, and it is the chilli in most Korean dishes that are red.

• frying — Bloomed briefly in oil the colour transfers and the flavour rounds out. It scorches quickly at high heat, and scorched gochugaru is bitter and brown — most Korean uses add it to a liquid or a paste rather than to a dry hot pan.
• boiling — Simmered in stews and soups it releases colour and a gentle heat without the sharpness that a hotter chilli would contribute at the same quantity.
• infusing — Left raw in a kimchi paste it colours and seasons the vegetable over days of fermentation without ever being cooked — a use its mildness and lack of bitterness make possible at that quantity.

Look at the colour first — gochugaru announces its age visibly, which most spices do not. Bright brick red is good; brown is past it. Then smell for the fruity, faintly sweet note; if all that is left is a vague heat, the aroma has gone even though the pigment may not have.

• Brown or dull colour
• Hard clumping
• No fruity aroma, only flat heat

• Photodegradation of capsanthin, seen as red turning brown
• Oxidation, losing the fruity aroma and leaving flat heat
• Moisture uptake, causing hard clumping

Gochugaru is only sold milled, so the usual whole-versus-ground advice does not apply — the choice is grind and origin instead. Buy coarse if you make kimchi and fine if you mostly make stews and sauces; buy Korean sun-dried once to know what it tastes like, then decide honestly whether you can tell in the dish you actually cook. Buy small quantities however good it is, because it fades within months, and put it in the freezer when you get it home.

• Deep brick red, neither brown nor unnaturally bright.
• Soft and faintly damp rather than dry and papery.
• No visible seeds — their presence means it is not really gochugaru.
• Origin and drying method stated: Korean sun-dried (taeyangcho) is the premium and it says so.
• The right grind for the job — coarse for kimchi, fine for sauces.

Korean packets distinguish origin, drying method, grind and heat level. Sun-dried Korean coarse flake is the top of the market and costs several times what imported machine-dried powder does; the difference is real and tasteable, though not always worth it for a stew where the chilli is one note among many.

Solanaceae

Korean cultivars of Capsicum annuum bred for long, thin-walled, deep red fruit with high colour and modest pungency, rather than for heat.

Capsicum annuum originates in the Americas. Chilli reached Korea in roughly the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, and the Korean cultivars and the sun-drying practice developed there afterwards.

• South Korea (Gyeongsang and Jeolla provinces) — major producer. Domestic production, particularly sun-dried taeyangcho, carries a substantial price premium.
• China — major producer. Much of the gochugaru sold cheaply outside Korea is Chinese-grown and machine-dried.

Picked fully red and ripe. Colour is the primary quality attribute, so unripe fruit is not worth drying.

1. Ripening and picking — Fruit left to full red maturity before picking.Why: Colour and sweetness both develop late.
2. Drying — Traditionally sun-dried over days — taeyangcho, literally sun-dried pepper. Industrially, hot-air dried in hours.Why: The difference is tasted as well as priced: sun-dried is sweeter and more complex, machine-dried flatter and often duller in colour.
3. Deseeding and destemming — Seeds, stems and most of the placenta removed before milling.Why: The main reason gochugaru is mild for its colour, and why it lacks the seedy bitterness of crushed red pepper.
4. Milling — Milled to coarse flake or fine powder, each sold separately.Why: The two grinds have distinct culinary uses.

Graded on colour, on origin, on drying method and on grind. Korean sun-dried coarse flake sits at the top and commands several times the price of imported machine-dried powder.

The commercial risks are origin substitution — Chinese product sold as Korean — and, as with all red powdered spices, the temptation to correct faded colour. Colour is the attribute buyers pay for, which is precisely why it attracts adulteration across this whole category.

Transplanted seedlings staked and grown through summer, with fruit picked at full red ripeness rather than green.

Warm summers with reliable sun through the drying season. The sun-drying step, not the growing, is what constrains where the premium product can be made.

Chilli reached Korea from the Americas via the wider Columbian exchange, plausibly around the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. Its adoption changed Korean food fundamentally: kimchi predates chilli, but the red kimchi now taken as definitive is a post-contact development. Korean cultivars were then selected for colour and mildness rather than heat, which is why gochugaru does not resemble the chilli products of any other cuisine.

Korea both produces and imports heavily, with domestic sun-dried product at a substantial premium and imported machine-dried product supplying the volume market. Outside Korea, most gochugaru on a supermarket shelf is the latter.