Sunny Anderson Fell for Gochujang in the Air Force. Here’s the 20-Minute Dinner It Deserves.

WHO’S EATING KOREAN · No. 1 · Jar: gochujang · 20 minutes · about 40 g protein per serving · See the series →

Every so often a well-known American cook says out loud what Korean households have known for generations. This series collects those moments, with sources, and then does the thing a food site should do: cooks something with them. Not the dish they ate, exactly. The weeknight version a Korean cook would make at home, with what’s on a North American shelf, and with the protein and sugar numbers written down.

What she said

Sunny Anderson, co-host of Food Network’s The Kitchen, served in the US Air Force before she cooked on television, and part of that service was in South Korea. Years later, talking about gochujang, she put it this way:

“I fell in love with it more than 20 years ago while serving in S. Korea & it’s finally here.”

“It’s funky & earthy in the best way, sweet, tangy & spicy!”

Sunny Anderson, quoted in Mashed, “Sunny Anderson’s South Korean Military Tour Inspired A Gochujang Love Affair,” February 7, 2023

Source: Mashed, Feb. 7, 2023. Sunny Anderson is not affiliated with My Healthy Food Life and has not endorsed anything here; we’re quoting a published interview because it’s a good description of the jar.

“Funky and earthy, sweet, tangy and spicy” is about as accurate a four-word description of gochujang as exists. It’s fermented chili paste: chili powder, glutinous rice, fermented soybean and salt, aged until the heat has something underneath it. The hub covers which tub to buy. The question this post answers is what to do with it on a Tuesday.

The Korean cook’s version

Most “gochujang chicken” recipes online are a bottled-sauce idea: a lot of sugar, a lot of oil, a glaze that tastes like candy with heat. In a Korean home kitchen gochujang is seasoning, not sauce. A tablespoon and a half flavors a whole pan for two, the sweetness comes from the paste itself and a single teaspoon of honey, and the vegetable isn’t a garnish. Here it’s half a head of cabbage, which goes sweet and a little charred against the chili and costs about a dollar.

The health change, in one line: chicken breast and a lot of cabbage instead of thighs and syrup, which puts a serving at about 40 g of protein and 6 g of fiber with roughly 70% less sugar than a typical bottled gochujang glaze. It is still, first, dinner you’d want again.

Ingredient Notes

Chicken breast, 12 oz for two. Cut into ¾-inch pieces so it cooks in four minutes and stays juicy. Boneless thighs work and are more forgiving; protein drops to about 34 g a serving.

Gochujang, 1½ tablespoons. Any Korean brand; the sugar line and heat level differ, so taste the sauce before it hits the pan. If yours is on the sweeter side, skip the honey entirely.

Cabbage, half a small head. Green cabbage, sliced ½ inch wide. The bagged shredded kind works; cook it two minutes less. Napa cabbage is softer and sweeter and also fine.

Soy sauce, rice vinegar, garlic, sesame oil. The sauce is gochujang thinned with these four. The vinegar is what keeps it from tasting heavy.

Rice. Half a cup of cooked brown rice per bowl (the frozen kind is fine). Or none; the cabbage is enough bulk on its own.

Gochujang Chicken and Cabbage Skillet

Serves 2 · Prep 8 min · Cook 12 min · Total 20 min · Dinner · Korean-American

Ingredients

• 12 oz (340 g) boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into ¾-inch pieces
• ½ teaspoon salt, divided
• 1½ tablespoons gochujang
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
• 1 teaspoon honey (optional; skip if your gochujang is sweet)
• 2 cloves garlic, grated
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 tablespoon neutral oil
• ½ small green cabbage (about 1 lb / 450 g), sliced ½ inch wide
• 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
• 2 scallions, sliced; 1 teaspoon sesame seeds
• 1 cup cooked brown rice, to serve (optional)

Instructions

1. Toss the chicken with ¼ teaspoon salt. In a small bowl, stir together the gochujang, soy sauce, vinegar, honey, garlic and water until smooth. Taste it: it should be clearly salty-sweet-sour with heat behind. Adjust now, not later.
2. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high until it shimmers. Add the chicken in one layer and leave it alone for 2 minutes, then stir and cook 2 minutes more until just cooked through. Move it to a plate.
3. Add the cabbage and the remaining ¼ teaspoon salt to the same pan. Cook, stirring every minute, for 5 to 6 minutes, until the edges brown and the cabbage goes limp and sweet. A little char is the point.
4. Return the chicken and any juices to the pan. Pour in the sauce and toss for 1 to 2 minutes, until it coats everything and thickens slightly. Turn off the heat and add the sesame oil.
5. Serve over rice or straight from the pan, with scallions and sesame seeds on top.

Per serving, with ½ cup brown rice (estimated from USDA FoodData Central values): about 430 kcal · 40 g protein · 38 g carbohydrate · 11 g fat · 6 g fiber · about 950 mg sodium. Without rice: about 320 kcal, 38 g protein, 15 g carbohydrate. Estimates vary with the gochujang brand.

Make It Yours

• Tofu instead of chicken: one 14-oz block of extra-firm tofu, pressed and cubed, browned the same way. About 22 g protein a serving.
• More heat: half a teaspoon of gochugaru with the cabbage.
• Less sodium: use 2 teaspoons soy sauce and a squeeze of lemon at the end; about 700 mg.
• Meal prep: double it. It reheats in a pan in three minutes and is good cold in a lettuce wrap.

Storage

Keeps 3 days in the fridge. Reheat in a skillet with a splash of water; the microwave works but the cabbage softens.

Recipe by My Healthy Food Life, developed for this series. Not adapted from any recipe by Sunny Anderson; her words are quoted from the published interview linked above.

Next in Who’s Eating Korean: the kimchi fried rice that Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street brought home from Seoul, rebuilt with brown rice and 30 g of protein.