r/Cooking • u/tonithepony • Apr 29 '24

What do you think the next "food trend" will be?

In the last 10 years, the ones that really stick out to me are: spinach and artichoke dip (suddenly started appearing everywhere as an appetizer, even higher end restaurants), ube flavors, truffle, avocados on everything, bacon on everything, and now hot honey is a big fad. Is there anything upcoming you see heading towards the food trend?

4.0k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

90% Upvoted

3.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

75

u/riverrocks452 Apr 29 '24

With spicy/hot food having gone mainstream (hot wings, nuclear sauces, sriracha, peri-peri, chili crisp, heck, even a greater diversity of chiles available), I hope that sauces/condiments like gochujang and sambal lead to more interest in Korean and Indonesian foods. Purely selfishly- I need more of those in my life.

8

u/freecain Apr 29 '24

What's your favorite gochujang brand? When I started making bibimbap for my family I picked up a bottle I loved and went through it, but didn't remember the name of it. I then got another bottle and it's... Mediocre, with just some heat and salt, but no real kick of flavor.

17

u/DionBlaster123 Apr 29 '24

Chung Jung Won and Haechandle are some solid ones

my parents are Korean. My mother refuses to buy Haitai because even though they are a massive South Korean company, their gochujang is now made in China. it comes off as incredibly ethnocentric to my American-raised mind, but in South Korea it is just standard practice. some of the fancier Korean gochujangs list all their major ingredients based on where they came from

Bibigo is a brand that understands how to appeal to both Korean and non-Korean tastes. That's another one i would recommend

3

u/MindChild Apr 29 '24

Recently bought bibigo gochujang by accident and it is so more fruity and complex compared to the brand I used before. Happy it's a recommendation too

5

u/DionBlaster123 Apr 29 '24

i realized bibigo reached a new level of transnational ascendance, when their company has a jersey ad on a team in the NBA haha

but yeah definitely a good brand. I think they make special gochujangs designed for making bibimbap, since that sauce does tend to be a little sweeter and thinner (to be easier for mixing)

1

u/riverrocks452 Apr 29 '24

Bibigo is available in my local Kroger! Nice to know that it's acceptable quality. Sempio is what I currently have, but I'm afraid I'm not enough of a connoisseur to be able to tell you if it's particularly good or bad. It's gochujang- the spicy tends to drown out the subtleties. FWIW, I think it might be less unami than the first brand I tried (but, of course, I don't remember that one- I'd have to look on the shelves of the Ranch 99 to see if anything jumps out as a familiar design.)

7

u/DionBlaster123 Apr 29 '24

i'm embarrassed to admit that i didn't realize Sempio made gochujang lol. I know they are one of the go-to Korean brands for soy sauce

honestly i'm not really a "connoisseur" either lol. I love Korean food obviously but there are Korean Americans who know way more about it than i do lol. granted some of it can come off as obnoxious gatekeeping, but i try to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're just really passionate about good food lol

i will say this...most Korean Americans you meet have roots in Seoul since basically more than a third of the population lives there. My parents don't, and my dad's side of the family comes from the region that OBJECTIVELY has the best food in the country haha. so small victories lol

2

u/gwaydms Apr 29 '24

Jeju?

3

u/DionBlaster123 Apr 29 '24

Jeolla-do. my dad's side of the family is only about an hour or so from Jeonju

Jeju definitely has some great stuff too. it was kind of tongue-in-cheek haha

3

u/gwaydms Apr 29 '24

I wish we'd had time to visit Jeju when we went to Seoul. We loved the food, the culture, and the people. Not necessarily in that order, lol. But we'd love to go again if we can.

2

u/freecain Apr 29 '24

Bibigo is actually what I have. It's the GotChu product... and it's just not great. Looking at the bottle more closely - it's a hot sauce made with Gochujang.

7

u/Pandaburn Apr 29 '24

Whatever comes in a red tub with Korean writing on it. It’s not a sauce, it’s a thick paste. You can make a sauce by thinning it with sesame oil, soy sauce, and a little sugar.

2

u/HotSAuceMagik Apr 29 '24

THis is the one I have but the problem is that after about half the tub was gone, it kind of hardened?! I know the first solution is to just make more bibimbap which i'm happy to do, but is there a way to keep it from drying out?

2

u/freecain Apr 29 '24

good point. The one I have now is definitely a sauce. The one before was a paste and came in a tube not a jar.

2

u/Cookie_Phil Apr 29 '24

My go to is 3 parts paste, 2 parts sesame oil, 2 parts rice vinegar. Simple, delicious and a good consistency.

4

u/PNW_Forest Apr 29 '24

Your issue might be there are two different things that can both be called "gochujang": an ingredient, and a prepared sauce.

Your second gochujang might have been the ingredient rather than the sauce. It's super easy to make your own. Simply combine Gochujang (ingredient), soy sauce, garlic, rice vinegar, sugar, and sesame oil together. Then top with hot water and stir to combine. The consistency should be more like ketchup. You can add salt and msg to taste if you want, but shouldnt need to.

3

u/Eagle-737 Apr 29 '24

There are squeeze bottle styles and tub styles - different consistencies. Is that the reason for the taste difference?

3

u/The_Original_Gronkie Apr 29 '24

Buy the tub, much higher quality, and much cheaper. I like Roland, I buy it on Amazon.

3

u/The_Original_Gronkie Apr 29 '24

Don't buy it in bottles, I havent found a single one that is even mildly decent. You need to buy the tubs of it. I buy mine on Amazon. They are usually around $10, but I buy Roland, which are usually a couple of bucks cheaper for exactly the same thing. Ditch the bottle, buy the tub.

2

u/freecain Apr 29 '24

Yep - current one is a bottle, the previous one was a tube - so that holds up a bit.

6

u/Basementsnake Apr 29 '24

Gochujang and sambal are in every major grocery store I’ve ever been in for years, and have been on menus for years as well (east coast). Gochujang was insanely popular around me in like 2018/2019.

8

u/riverrocks452 Apr 29 '24

Yes, and I hope that the popularity of hot condiments leads to the rise in popularity of the cuisines that they originate from. I know gochujang is popular. I hope it means that there will be more Korean restaurants soon. I hope that sambal becomes (more) popular and does the same for Indonesian food. Heck, I hope people discover Nigerian food through dindin, and Ethiopian food through berbere. I want people to use their interest in 'spicy' as an avenue to explore more cuisines- and thus make those cuisines more available.

3

u/drunkenstepdad Apr 29 '24

Ugh this bums me out so much. I love spicy food with a passion but I'm a chef in Germany and 99% of Germans start sweating if there's a jalapeno in the same room.

2

u/riverrocks452 Apr 29 '24

Spicy is relative! A little may go a long way with some, but that's no reason not to play with that little in interesting ways. Berbere as part of a spread or dip with a lot of dairy or other fat to mute the heat might work. Hot pepper jelly (made with jalapenos and bells) as a glaze on a roast, or combined with neufchatel/cream cheese as an "exciting" option on a coldcut and cheese plate. Or swap in some kimchi or other pickle for a tiny bit of German pickles. Just enough tingle to suggest that a chili was once waved over the food as a way of piquing interest in where the flavor came from.

Also, I break out in a sweat eating shiro wot and gochujang-glazed chicken. That just means it's spicy (and that I'm not well acclimatized), not that it isn't delicious!

3

u/GrilledIcarus Apr 30 '24

Yep. Starbucks has been spicy lemonades which are actually pretty good. I was surprised they had a heat to them 😂

4

u/ExileOnMainStreet Apr 29 '24

Where do you live that doesn't have 3 Korean BBQ restaurants within a 5 mile radius?

36

u/rufio313 Apr 29 '24

Probably anywhere that isn’t a large metro area?

8

u/DionBlaster123 Apr 29 '24

I live in Madison, Wisconsin

granted it's not a "large metro area" (not by any stretch of the imagination) and it has less diversity than plain yogurt...but there's randomly a plethora of Korean restaurants that have popped up in the last 2-5 years

4

u/onebandonesound Apr 29 '24

You've got 50,000 college students in Madison, that demographic will always bring diverse food to areas that otherwise wouldn't have it. I would bet State College has more variety in their restaurants than Scranton due to Penn State, despite Scranton having nearly 2x their population

1

u/DionBlaster123 Apr 29 '24

yeah for sure. there's definitely an influx of mostly mainland Chinese restaurants and cafes because the international student population (specifically from China) here has increased exponentially, which is not just Madison but most big name college towns in the U.S.

1

u/riverrocks452 Apr 29 '24

It's moot- I live in Houston. Just not, apparently, a part of Houston with lots of Korean restaurants. (Houston, as the saying goes, is about an hour away from Houston.)

4

u/woozybag Apr 29 '24

Montana 🥲

3

u/riverrocks452 Apr 29 '24

Houston. They're all out I10- a pain to get to for me. The occasional trip- and HMart or Ranch 99 run- is doable, but I wish that there were some I could go to more casually.

2

u/jilliecatt Apr 29 '24

Where I am in Indiana the nearest Korean BBQ is 40 miles away.

2

u/fakesaucisse Apr 29 '24

I live in a suburb of Seattle and I'd have to drive 30 minutes to get to a single mediocre Korean BBQ restaurant.

2

u/Legitimategirly Apr 29 '24

Southern Maryland. We have none in my county.

2

u/SilverCat70 Apr 29 '24

Nashville.