Samyang Buldak Original Hot Sauce Mini-Review

Samyang Buldak Original

I’ve seen this out for quite some time and it’s a very smart move by Buldak to put this out in bottles, thus extending their brand name and the flavor profile of perhaps the main progenitors of the so-called Korean Spicy Chicken Noodle craze. I thought of it more as a Buldak sauce, which is a barbeque sauce, more or less, to my knowledge, or maybe as a ramen sauce, but when I got the bottle, it is describing itself as a hot sauce, so, fine.

As with other makers who bottle stuff under the description of hot sauce that I don’t necessarily agree is an appropriate categorization, I will treat it as one, but since I bought this mainly to try on some Chinese ramen noodles that I rather adore, I had no plans to do the usual hot sauce testing I put the others through for the full reviews. I did try it on some chicken tendies, and it was good there, but that was expected, both because it is a barbeque sauce more than anything at heart and because it is a quite good tasting sauce as well, doing a pretty capable job of disguising the awful taste of extract. This was the entry level of heat for Samyang and I’d put it firmly in the middle of their current slate of offerings, with stuff both below and above it in terms of heat. It does present a very flavorful example of extract heat and how it affects the mouth and while it may be a bit on the intense side for non-chileheads, I don’t think it will be hugely challenging.

While I do not feel it ultimately is an actual hot sauce, I do think that it presents a lot of opportunity to add some Korean fusion to various dishes that may be cooked, particularly those involving meats. It is a sauce that really needs to be in the right setting, though, and I think it’s fairly inherently limited in that respect. One needs to be judicious in pairing, to be certain, but where it works, it works well.