JANG Korean-Style Hot Sauce

A taste of Korea, fermented in clay vessels.

A Korean-style hot sauce built on house-made gochujang fermented in onggi vessels, loquat vinegar, doenjang, and Appalachian sorghum. The most labor-intensive sauce in the ONIMA lineup.

The gochujang in this bottle is fermented from scratch for six to twelve months inside onggi, the traditional Korean earthenware vessels that have held this kind of paste for centuries. Our onggi come from Adam Field, a potter in Helena, Montana who apprenticed in 2008 under Kim Il-Maan, a sixth-generation onggi master and Korean National Cultural Treasure. The clay breathes, the paste develops, and a year later it goes into the sauce.

The vinegar gets the same treatment. Loquats from a San Diego farmer's market, fermented first into wine, then into vinegar. Fresh Fresno and habanero peppers ferment separately for the chili backbone. Doenjang (Korean fermented soybean paste, similar to miso but funkier) adds another layer. Sorghum from Appalachia rounds it out, the regional sweetener of Kentucky where ONIMA was started.

Every one of those components ferments on its own clock before any of them meet in the bottle. The build itself is the easy part. Most of the work happens in the months leading up to it. The finished sauce pours ruby red, hits salivating-savory on the first bite, builds a slow heat through the middle, and coats the tongue clean on the way out.