Eric Kim Put Gochujang in Buttered Noodles. Here’s the Weeknight Version With 28 g of Protein.

WHO’S EATING KOREAN · No. 3 · Jar: gochujang · 20 minutes · about 28 g protein per serving · See the series →

Some Korean ingredients cross over quietly. Gochujang did not. In the last few years it has gone from the bottom shelf of the H Mart condiment aisle to the center of one of the most-talked-about recipes in American food media: a bowl of pasta, a lot of butter, garlic, a spoon of chili paste. This series collects the moments when a well-known cook says out loud what Korean households have known for generations, with sources, and then cooks something with them. Not the dish they made, exactly. The weeknight version a Korean cook would make at home, with the protein and sugar numbers written down.

What they said

Eric Kim, the NYT Cooking columnist and author of Korean American, published a recipe called Gochujang Buttered Noodles. It is a member recipe, so we won’t reproduce it here. What we can quote is the reaction. In August 2025, Simply Recipes ran a piece whose headline called it the best recipe the New York Times has ever published, and its writer, Devan Grimsrud, described the dish this way:

“a bit sweet, a tad spicy, a lot garlicky, and incredibly delicious”

Devan Grimsrud, Simply Recipes, “This Is the Best Recipe The New York Times Has Ever Published,” August 21, 2025

Source: Simply Recipes via AOL, Aug. 21, 2025. The quote is the reviewer’s, not Eric Kim’s; the original recipe is on NYT Cooking (subscription). Eric Kim has nothing to do with My Healthy Food Life and has not endorsed anything here. We’re pointing at a published review because it says, in ten words, why this jar belongs in a pasta pot.

“A bit sweet, a tad spicy, a lot garlicky” is the gochujang-and-butter idea in a sentence. Butter rounds off the fermented edge of the paste, garlic gives it something to hold onto, and the paste’s own sugars turn glossy in the pan. The hub covers which tub to buy. This post is about what a Korean home cook does with the same idea on a Tuesday, when dinner also has to be dinner.

The Korean cook’s version

Gochujang buttered noodles, in most versions you’ll find online, is a comfort dish: refined pasta, several tablespoons of butter, honey to balance the heat, and not much protein beyond what’s in the noodles. Nothing wrong with that once in a while. But in a Korean kitchen gochujang is a seasoning, not the main event, and a bowl of noodles is almost never served without something to go with it. My grandmother would have put an egg on it without thinking. I put an egg and edamame on it.

The health change, in one line: whole-wheat noodles, a half cup of edamame and a jammy egg per bowl, with a single tablespoon of butter for two instead of a stick. That puts a serving at about 28 g of protein and 10 g of fiber, roughly a quarter of the butter of a typical version, and honey measured in quarter teaspoons rather than tablespoons. The sauce still tastes like gochujang and butter, because that’s a hard combination to ruin.

Ingredient Notes

Whole-wheat spaghetti, 6 oz for two. It has about twice the fiber of regular pasta and holds up to a heavy sauce. Chickpea pasta pushes protein to about 36 g a serving if you want it; it needs a splash more pasta water. Thin Korean somyeon works too and cooks in three minutes.

Gochujang, 2 tablespoons. Brands differ in sugar and heat. Taste yours on a fingertip first: if it reads sweet, skip the honey; if it reads hot, start with 1½ tablespoons.

Butter, 1 tablespoon, plus 1 teaspoon olive oil. The butter is for flavor; the oil keeps the garlic from catching. That’s all the fat the sauce needs because the pasta water does the rest.

Edamame, 1 cup shelled. Frozen, straight into the pasta pot for the last two minutes. About 9 g of protein a half cup, and the color is half the point.

Eggs, 2. Boiled for 6½ minutes so the yolk is set at the edge and soft in the middle; it becomes part of the sauce when you break it. Fried works if you’d rather.

Garlic, rice vinegar, soy sauce, parmesan. Three cloves of garlic is “a lot garlicky.” The vinegar is the Korean cook’s trick for keeping a gochujang sauce from tasting heavy. A tablespoon of parmesan is not traditional and is very good.

Gochujang-Buttered Noodles with Edamame and Egg

Serves 2 · Prep 5 min · Cook 15 min · Total 20 min · Dinner · Korean-American

Ingredients

• 2 large eggs
• 6 oz (170 g) whole-wheat spaghetti
• 1 cup (150 g) frozen shelled edamame
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 2 tablespoons gochujang
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon rice vinegar
• ½ teaspoon honey (optional; skip if your gochujang is sweet)
• 2 tablespoons grated parmesan
• 2 scallions, sliced; 1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds

Instructions

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Lower in the eggs and cook 6½ minutes, then lift them into a bowl of cold water. Keep the water boiling.
2. Add the spaghetti to the same pot and cook 1 minute less than the package says. Two minutes before it’s done, add the edamame. Before draining, scoop out 1 cup of the pasta water.
3. While the pasta cooks, melt the butter with the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook 1 to 2 minutes, until fragrant and just golden at the edges; don’t let it brown. Stir in the gochujang, soy sauce, vinegar and honey and cook 30 seconds, until the paste darkens slightly and smells toasty.
4. Add ½ cup of the pasta water to the skillet and whisk until the sauce is smooth and glossy. Add the drained pasta and edamame and toss over medium heat for 1 to 2 minutes, adding more pasta water a splash at a time, until every strand is coated and the sauce clings instead of pooling. Off the heat, toss in the parmesan.
5. Peel and halve the eggs. Divide the noodles between two bowls, set the egg halves on top, and finish with scallions and sesame seeds.

Per serving (estimated from USDA FoodData Central values): about 580 kcal · 28 g protein · 78 g carbohydrate · 16 g fat · 10 g fiber · about 750 mg sodium. With chickpea pasta in place of whole-wheat: about 36 g protein, 60 g carbohydrate. Estimates vary with the gochujang brand.

Make It Yours

• Shrimp instead of egg: 6 oz peeled shrimp, cooked in the skillet for 2 minutes before the garlic goes in, then set aside and tossed back at the end. About 34 g protein a serving.
• Vegan: use 1 tablespoon olive oil in place of the butter, skip the egg and parmesan, and double the edamame. About 24 g protein, and still glossy.
• Greens: two big handfuls of spinach or chopped bok choy into the pasta pot with the edamame.
• Less sodium: drop the soy sauce and finish with a squeeze of lemon; about 550 mg.

Storage

Keeps 2 days in the fridge. Reheat in a skillet with a few tablespoons of water to loosen the sauce. Boil a fresh egg; a reheated jammy egg is a hard-boiled egg.

Recipe by My Healthy Food Life, developed for this series. A Korean cook’s version of the gochujang-and-butter idea Eric Kim popularized on NYT Cooking, as reviewed by Simply Recipes (2025); not a reproduction of that recipe, and not affiliated with either publication.

Previously in Who’s Eating Korean: Sunny Anderson, gochujang and a 20-minute chicken skillet and Milk Street’s kimchi fried rice, rebuilt with 30 g of protein. Next: the Top Chef host who eats kimchi straight from the jar, and the 20-minute dubu-kimchi skillet it deserves.