Gochugaru

Salt pulls the water, chilli fills the space. That order, never the reverse.

Salt-funk feeds the lactic ferment; the chilli keeps it from smelling rotten.

Raw allicin plus sweet heat, the two loudest notes in Korean cooking.

Cubed and salted, the heat ferments in rather than sitting on the surface.

Flake for texture and colour, paste for sugar and body. Different jobs.

Toasted fat rounds off the flake and stops the heat from being flat.

Rendered fat dissolves the capsaicin; the sweetness survives the grill.

Quick-salted, then dressed. Water crunch against slow fruity heat.

Sliced in raw, so the allium keeps its edge instead of cooking down into sugar.

Coarse flakes cling to the strands where fine powder would not.

Salt, heat and time. The chilli feeds the ferment as much as it flavours it.

No flavour to fight, so the flake supplies both colour and character.

The pear sugar feeds the ferment and softens the raw chilli edge.

Both carry sweet fruity esters; the flake pushes the berry savoury.

Sun-dried fruit note meets cocoa; the heat is slow enough to follow.