Firecracker Sauce
For ground beef sticky rice bowls and fried spring rolls
Welcome to The Sauce, deep travels through food and drink culture written by Charlie Brown, founder and former owner of what was once named Britain’s best independent wine store.
The Sauce is 100% reader-supported. For $5 a month or $50 a year, you’ll get access to hundreds of recipes and an ever-increasing number of food and wine commentaries and articles, as well as discounts on my remote wine consulting service.
I’ll teach you how to cook better. How to buy better drinks. How to cope with wine culture when it threatens to overwhelm you.
Your donation keeps the oven on and the pantry stocked. Thank you.
Sometimes I have a great origin story to accompany my recipes. Like the time I navigated Porto’s fish market to make ceviche. Or my love for Ajvar that was spawned from countless weeks spent in the Balkans.
Today’s recipe for firecracker sauce does not have one of those stories.
But not all recipes need a great story. Sometimes they can just be. It doesn’t make them any less great and that’s certainly the case with firecracker sauce.
As the name suggests, this is one punch-you-around-the-face sauce. Spicy, salty, umami, and a little sweet, it’s one of those versatile marinades or sauces that can go on pretty much anything.
Mine is made with Gochujang, Korean fermented soybean and red chilli paste.
Gochujang is relatively easy to pick up — Walmart and Trader Joe’s both do it, as does Amazon. If you’re in the UK and have access to one of the wonderful ethnic stores that pepper the country, you’ll probably find it there (how I miss those stores).
Elsewhere, online is your friend.
Many online firecracker recipes call for Sriracha, which is a good alternative if you have it at home and don’t want to buy Gochujang (although I’ve included a few suggestions on how to use it in other ways in the variations section below).
The only issue I have with Sriracha is that many of them have a musty smell which I attribute to the garlic they use. Garlic is becoming increasingly tainted with TCA (has anyone else noticed this?), which is the same compound found in the cork of corked wine. It smells a lot like wet cardboard or damp spots in your house. Alas it’s a problem I’ve found all over the world, including in some Srirachas.
But if you have a Sriracha brand you like then for sure, sub it in.
As for what to do with firecracker sauce, I’ve got two full recipes for you as well as some other ways to use up any leftovers.
The first is a ground beef rice bowl that will blow the cobwebs off any lingering winter colds. The second is a rice paper roll recipe filled with vegetables (great for finishing up little leftover bits in your fridge), fried until golden and crisp.
The origin story of how this recipe came to be may be dull, but the sauce is anything but.
