ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Gochujang

Gochujang is a yummy sauce that is made in Korea. It is red and spicy and tastes a little bit sweet too!

Imagine that you are making a really cool fort in your backyard. You need lots of different things to build this fort. You might use sticks, mud, leaves, and rocks. The grown-ups in Korea also have things they need to make gochujang.

To make gochujang, they use something called chili peppers. These are little red fruits that can be really hot! Just like how you might use sticks to build your fort, you use these chili peppers to make gochujang.

But gochujang has other things in it besides chili peppers! Just like how you use mud and leaves to build your fort, you also need something called rice powder and soybeans to make gochujang. And just like you use rocks to help hold your fort together, you need salt and something called a fermentation starter to help all the ingredients in gochujang stick together.

After the grown-ups mix all these ingredients together, they let them sit for a long time - kind of like how you let a new plant grow in your garden before you pick it. This helps the gochujang get really tasty!

You can put gochujang on lots of different foods to make them taste better. Some people like to put it on rice, or noodles, or even pizza! Just like how your cool fort makes you happy and proud when you make it, gochujang makes the people in Korea happy too!