6 Best Chung Jung One Sauce: Taste Reviews

What is Chung Jung One used for

Chung Jung One is a traditional Korean paste that has found immense popularity all over the globe for its extreme dexterity. It’s a sauce that’s usually prepared from either anchovies or oysters, giving it a rather distinct taste from regular fish sauce. This also makes it an option for a much larger variety of dishes than other sauces – not just for Asian cuisines but can find a place in various American diets and recipes, too.

Here are our top Chung Jung One Sauces ranked in terms of the editors’ preference.

1. Chung Jung One Sunchang Hot Pepper Paste Gold

Taste test

Korean Chung Jung One Sunchang is hot with a gooey texture. This hot pepper is a bit like that – with a rich, grainy flavor. It seems to have been achieved at the expense of texture. The more you eat, the more you notice the deep peppery flavor – a nice garlicky and peppery taste that holds its own with pretty much any food.

Pros

• It’s not too spicy for the average user.
• Pungent in an enjoyable way and can be used with a lot of different dishes.

Cons

• The wide audience appeal comes at the cost of sacrificing the kind of intensity Sunchang is supposed to have.

What it’s best used for

Here’s where the magic of Sunchang is truly revealed. We can use this paste in all our favorite Korean dishes without missing a single beat – fried vegetables, bibimbap, kimchi, Hotteok… you name it. Even better, other everyday meals aren’t spared either – pasta, cakes, pork, and roasted beef also go amazingly well with this sauce.

2. Gochujang Korean Chili Sauce

Taste test

This sauce has a nice thick texture and comes with a slightly sweet flavor tangled together with a host of other ingredients. It offers a sense of completeness. The more sauce you use in a recipe, however, the more the other flavors overwhelm the sweetness and thicken your food. This then leads to a good kick in the mouth as aftertaste – none of that starchy feeling you get after eating pasta or a burning mouth from food that’s too spicy.

Pros

• Fewer ingredients
• Can be used in a wide range of dishes.

Cons

• Getting the last drops of the delicious stuff from a squeeze bottle is quite challenging.

What it’s best used for

As mentioned before, potential uses for this sauce are in abundance. Of course, traditional Korean meals like Kimchi are covered, but pasta, ramen, and lamb are not to be left out.

3. Premium Anchovy Fish Sauce Gold

Taste test

This fish sauce presents the perfect opportunity to showcase the great difference between different Asian recipes, in this case, Thai and Korean. Thai fish sauce is known for its strong and pungent flavor but is a lot more nuanced than other sauces. However, this anchovy fish sauce is a lot deeper and mellow without being too salty, as is often the case with fish sauces.

Pros

• No need for extra additives like salt, sugar, and pepper

Cons

• This is a product that’s been made to appeal to a wide variety of audiences, so it’s not very strong

What it’s best used for

Thanks to its lack of nuance, it can be used in a wide range of dishes – most notably stir fry and anything containing vegetables. For people that love to experiment, switching out this fish sauce for the same in Thai dishes like chicken satay should produce some very interesting results.

4. Chung Jung One Sunchang Seasoned Soybean Paste

Taste test

This ssamjang is thick and spicy with notes of garlic and sugar. It has a salty savoriness to recipes it’s used in. Its mild and sweet taste is closer to the consistency of miso paste, but seems to push the boundaries a little bit more, in a good way. This thick brown paste is funkier than its distant cousin and has the same pungent smell you’d expect from blue cheese. For some, this might be off-putting at first, but the savory taste is more than worth it.

Pros

• Tastes really amazing
• The target audience is narrowly-defined, so it tastes authentic

Cons

• Costs a little bit more than you can get from other brands

What it’s best used for

In terms of flexibility, this is another very resourceful thing every kitchen needs. The sweet thick and gooey taste goes well with pizza, chicken wings, and even rice. If you plan on making Korean dishes with it, we recommend bibimbap and sundubu-jjigae.

5. Korean BBQ Bulgogi Sauce & Marinade for Beef

Taste test

The taste of bulgogi sauce is one that is literally impossible to mistake for anything else. So much so that it’s usually the first thing non-Koreans are served when trying out Korean cuisines for the first time.

The enhanced taste of bulgogi sauce is one of the few things it’s impossible to give up once you try it. It’s a sweet, slightly tangy flavor that hints at its constituent components – not too salty and not too much vinegar to overwhelm your mouth. It is a flavourful, sweet and sour sauce with a hint of garlic and slight hotness of pepper to top it all off.

Pros

• Tastes authentic
• Cost-effective for its size

Cons

• Might be too spicy for first-time users

What it’s best used for

Unlike most other pastes on this list, this bulgogi sauce is the excellent choice for tenderizing your meat, especially instead of spending hours or more making it yourself. We can use it pretty much for any recipe containing meat.

6. Chung Jung One Premium Korean BBQ Sauce and Marinade

Taste test

This isn’t a terrible marinade and BBQ sauce by any means – far from being the worst we’ve ever tried. It’s not too smoky, not too overwhelming and not too raw. It’s quite close to what you’d find in a fancy Koren restaurant, but not the most fulfilling thing the market has to offer, either. It’s sweeter than it is tangy, but quite enjoyable all the same.

Pros

• Constitutes of more sweet than bitter ingredients than most other brands.
• The taste is simple yet delicate mixture of flavor, and perhaps adventure.

Cons

• It doesn’t work well as BBQ sauce because it’s a lot thinner than the average sauce.

What it’s best used for

This sauce works well for meals containing any sort of meat since it both tenderizes and adds an interesting bit of flavor. If you need to marinate and tenderize your beef, pork, lamb or what have you, this is a prime option.

Conclusion

In our reviews, we found Chung Jung One Sunchang Hot Pepper Paste Gold to be one incredible beast of a paste. The flavor adds to food is more complex than any meal we’ve ever prepared. It’s not too much for a newbie nor too diluted for the veteran – just the right texture and amount of spiciness. Definitely worth a try.

The Anchovy Fish Sauce was also an interesting experience, only ever having used fish paste before. And the whole ordeal was one worth reliving over and over again.

Overall, Korean sauces can be pretty difficult to choose from because there seems to a few differences in terms of quality and usage. However, the tastes, once you’ve used them enough, are very different. It’s not possible to replace any of the sauce in the recipe. For instance, kimchi with soy sauce added on top would taste extremely different. You should use seasoned soybean paste instead. Every sauce on this list has its merits, especially in terms of taste. Choose the right one to make your favorite dishes.

Lucy Xue

Meeting you is so nice. I am happy to share my passion for all things that are salted, sweet, and savory. I hope pleasure, happiness, and nourishment can be found in everything we have today.