One trip to the Korean grocery up in Salt Lake
Okay. Last lesson was Costco and Macey's — what they cover, which is more than you'd think. This lesson is the part they don't cover, and why one trip fixes it for a while.
Here's the thing — people hear "Korean grocery" and picture a whole production. A drive, a language barrier, a store where they won't know what anything is. It's a store. It's got carts and aisles and a guy at the register who does not care that you're new here. Go in, get your list, get out. Twenty minutes.
I'm sending you in with an actual list, because I over-plan, I know I over-plan, but you'll thank me in the parking lot.
What you're buying, and why
Gochugaru (Korean red pepper flakes). Not the same as regular red pepper flakes, not the same as gochujang. This is the one ingredient in this whole course I will not let you substitute your way around. Get the coarse kind for kimchi, and if the bag doesn't say coarse or fine, ask, they'll point you to it.
Gochujang. The fermented red pepper paste, comes in a tub, usually red plastic. This keeps basically forever in your fridge. Buy the big tub. You will use it more than you think once you have it.
Doenjang. Fermented soybean paste, darker, funkier, this is your soup base later in the course. Small tub is fine to start.
Toasted sesame oil. Costco has this now, actually, so you may already own it. Check before you buy a second bottle.
Soy sauce, the Korean kind if you can find it — it's a little different from the Chinese soy sauce most people have. Not a dealbreaker if you can't find it, your regular soy sauce works, but if it's on the shelf, grab it.
Rice cakes (tteok), frozen. Cylinder shaped, in the freezer section. We're not doing rice cake dishes early in this course but they freeze forever and you'll want them eventually. Optional today.
Sweet potato starch noodles (dangmyeon). For japchae. Dry, in a bag, look like glassy tan rubber bands until you soak them. This is the noodle that made half my ward ask me for a recipe, so.
Anchovy stock packets or dried anchovies and dried kelp (dashima). For soup base. Little bag, keeps in the freezer.
Fish sauce, sesame seeds, a jar of minced garlic if you don't want to mince your own. All cheap, all last a long time.
That's it. That's the list. One cart, one trip, and you're stocked for a couple months because none of this stuff spoils fast and you don't use much at a time.
The thing about volume
I ran out of counter space doubling a kimchi recipe once. I do not miscalculate volume — that's usually my whole thing, I'm the one with the spreadsheet — and I still stood there with cabbage covering every surface in my kitchen because I didn't actually think through what "double" meant in real, physical cabbage. It looked like nothing on paper. It was a lot of cabbage.
So when you're standing in the store deciding how much gochugaru to buy: buy more than you think you need for one recipe, because it keeps, but don't buy some giant catering-size bag your first trip just because it's a better per-ounce price. Get the medium bag. Figure out how fast you actually go through it. Scale up on your second trip.
A word on cost
The tubs and bags at the Asian market look more expensive than a jar of taco seasoning, I know. But you're not buying it once a week. Gochujang, doenjang, the sesame oil — those are pantry items, not weekly items. Divide the cost over the two or three months it'll actually last you and it's cheap. Cheaper than takeout, easily.
Don't overthink the trip itself
You don't need to read every label. You don't need to know what everything in the store is. Go in with the list, find the ten things on it, and leave. Here's the thing — I've watched people talk themselves out of even trying because the idea of the store feels like a test they might fail. It's not a test. Nobody's grading you on knowing what to do with the dried squid in aisle four. Get your list, go.
One real caution: gochugaru gets into the air when you're cooking with it in quantity, especially toasting it in a dry pan, and it will make you cough if your kitchen's not ventilated. Crack a window. Utah air is dry enough already without you adding pepper dust to it.
Before next time
Make the trip before our next class if you can — the list above, twenty minutes, one cart. If the Asian market's not workable for you this week, at minimum grab the gochugaru and gochujang somewhere, because we're using both soon and I don't want you scrambling the night before.