Kimchi Aioli

This Kimchi Aioli has to be one of the best sauces I have ever made. It is spicy, funky, garlicky, and just a little bit sour. My favorite way to use it is dipped with fries but it also makes a great sandwich/burger topping.

This recipe is actually inspired by a Korean fusion restaurant that I went to not too long ago. I decided to use a standard aioli recipe mixed with ingredients that I would normally use for kimchi, like gochugaru, fish sauce, garlic, and ginger.

Key ingredients

For this recipe, you will need mayonnaise, kimchi brine (the leftover juice from the kimchi jar), gochugaru, fish sauce, garlic, ginger, onion, and white vinegar. The reason I am only using the kimchi brine is because I do not like the texture of chopped-up kimchi in this sauce.

For the gochugaru, I am using a coarse-grind gochugaru that I use for kimchi. Ideally, you use a finely ground one, but I did not have one, so I just pounded it in my mortar and pestle. Here is a picture of the gochugaru that I am using:

If you are not familiar with gochugaru, it is essentially a Korean dried chili flake. It is mostly used for its flavor rather than its spiciness, i.e., it is not that spicy. That is why kimchi recipes usually have a lot of gochugaru (like ¼ cup for each pound of kimchi) but the kimchi is not that spicy.

Using a microplane

I grated the ginger, garlic, and onion on a microplane so that they would "dissolve" into the sauce. This intensifies their flavor and prevents you from biting into large pieces of them. Here is a picture of the onion after I grated it:

As you can see, the result is pretty much a puree/paste. It mixes very easily and distributes the flavor better.

Adjusting the acidity

My kimchi brine was not as acidic as I thought it would be so I added some extra vinegar to liven it up. You can add more or less vinegar depending on how sour your kimchi brine is.