Korean Seasoning Paste made from Garlic, Radish, Pear, Onion and Ginger
Ready for a fabulously fresh and flavorful seasoning paste that you can use just about anywhere? This seasoning blend works great for many Korean recipes- for braising fish, marinating meats, for jjigae, for Kimchi or just about Korean food that requires basic garlic and ginger flavor. This is a pretty recent discovery for me although the recipe has been around since the 80′s. The original recipe comes from Ms. Youngsoon Shim who is a well known cooking instructor and also is a judge in a popular Korean TV cooking competition called Hansik Daecheop (한식대첩).
If you make this ahead of time and keep it frozen, it will save you a LOT of time and effort when you cook.I just added it to my Tofu yangnyumjang for today’s dinner and it had a wonderful freshness to it.
Ingredients
- 8 oz onions
- 8 oz Korean radish (daikon is OK too)
- 8 oz garlic
- 8 oz Korean pear or Asian pear
- 1 oz ginger
Ingredients for garlic ginger paste
* Blender works best but you can also use a chopper or grater.
* Original recipe calls for 200g each of onions, radish, garlic, pear and 10g ginger.
1. Wash/clean and peel all ingredients. Optionally, you can leave the pears unpeeled.
2. Cut pears, radish and onions into large chunks and put in a blender.
garlic and ginger paste in blender
3. Blend until smooth.
Garlic, onion, pear, radish and ginger blended
4. The original recipe and many Korean food blogs tell you to strain the paste and use the juice only from the blended mixture. But I think that’s just too much work.. 
And I really don’t think it’s necessary in most cases so I freeze everything. Freeze the paste in a plastic bag (see My Tips page on how I freeze garlic) and score into squares so they break off easily. If you are going to freeze the juice only, freeze them in ice cube trays.
Use the seasoning paste on any recipes that use both garlic and ginger. The Asian pear and onion add a bit of sweetness so don’t use this in dishes that’s not supposed to be sweet. Since the paste contains only small amount of ginger, additional ginger will be needed for fish and pork recipes.
Now go ahead and make the paste and make your life easier by storing this amazing seasoning paste in your freezer!!
Happy cooking~
