April 21, 2025

Recipe: The Universal Condiment

Niles used to make this delicious sauce regularly. I love it so much, and jokingly call it “The Baranowski Universal Condiment” because I put it on just about everything. He couldn’t remember where he first found the recipe, but I showed the ingredients to our friend Theo recently, and he said: “Gochujang, honey, and soy sauce together is a pretty classic pairing! Look up yangnyeom.”

Yangnyeom-tongdak 념통닭 means "seasoned whole chicken" in Korean. It’s the sweet/savory/spicy sauce smothering crispy chicken in many Korean wing joints!

The story goes that this style of sauce for fried chicken was invented in the 1980s by Yoon Jonggye to soften the extra crispy chicken in his restaurant. I ended up comparing about two dozen different recipes for this, and they’re all different! So you can aboslutely adjust this to your own tastes. The main constants are gochujang and some kind of sweetener: often honey, but sometimes brown sugar, rice syrup, or even strawberry jam! Most recipes include some kind of soy sauce, and some kind of oil. Many add other ingredients like gochugaru, black pepper, garlic, or ginger. Some of the recipes recommend boiling the sauce until it thickens, but I find it whisking it at room temperature works just fine.

And no, I guess I haven’t actually put this on ice cream yet, but I’m convinced it would taste pretty dang good on a scoop of decent vanilla. :)

Upcoming Things:

• I will be at the Art Mart at Federales Logan Square on Saturday, May 3, from noon-3pm. If you are in Chicago, come stop by! I’ll have books and prints, possibly some puzzles too, and a handful of watercolors. There will be some other very talented artists too, and $1 from every margarita will go to The Center for Changing Lives.

• Also, I will officially be exhibiting at CAKE Chicago this year! This is always a superb show, with some excellent indie artists. Definitely come check it out.

Hey Sarah, how’s the book going:

THUMBNAILS ARE DONE!!! I don’t even have words for how happy I am that thumbnails are done. I’m getting started on final art now. Everything’s due in August, and I have to keep a pace of 10-12 pages a week to meet that deadline.

What I’m into lately:

I picked up a delightfully weird little book called Strange Pictures by an author named Uketsu who is described as “an enigmatic presence on YouTube”. I am old, and don’t really follow YouTube celebs, but I stumbled upon this book and it’s pretty interesting! Not really horror, although it’s definitely unsettling; more of a curious mystery that ties together several seemingly disparate storylines. I dig it!

What Toki’s into lately:

Like many cats, Toki has become a connoisseur of sunbeams, and will follow his favorite ones around the house for prime napping opportunities.