"Black bean sauce with garlic is the same thing as black bean paste, right?"

No, not really.

I discovered Doobydobap today and have always wanted to try making my own jja jang myun! She has a recipe for this using just 5 ingredients.

It was pretty easy to make other than that I cried a whole lot cutting two whole onions and also forced myself to learn how to cut onions from Gordon Ramsay.

That said, I made a mistake: I substituted black bean paste with the Lee Kum black bean paste w/ garlic. That paste is super salty (more than yours truly) and I added way too much without taste testing. As a result, the beef are salt bombs. I managed to cut through the saltiness a bit with some diced apple and mirin.

Over all, I'd give my own scuffed creation a 6-7 out of 10 due to how salty I made it. I'm sure it'd be easily better next time.

Improvements next time:

• Maybe don't use Lee Kum black bean garlic paste or add way less of it
• Add less oil in the initial stir fry of aromatics, the noodles are a little oily