Gochu

Gochu Pepper

Growing Gochu seeds is an easy way to bring a popular Korean pepper into your own backyard. It has fairly mild heat and a lot of uses in the kitchen. Gochu peppers are a staple in Korean cooking and show up in everything from kimchi to Korean barbecue.

It is a Capsicum annuum, the same species as the Jalapeno and Cayenne. With more than 300 pepper varieties growing around here, this is still one of the peppers Cincinnati-area locals ask me about most when looking for fresh pods. As much as I enjoy sharing peppers with neighbors, why hunt around for a popular pepper that can be surprisingly hard to find fresh when you can just grow your own?

Heat Level and Flavor

Heat can vary, but ours are generally pretty mild at around 1,500 SHU. That puts them at the extreme low end of jalapeno heat.

Flavor is a mix of sweetness, mild heat, and a little smokiness. One of the most common uses is drying the peppers and turning them into flakes for Korean dishes such as kimchi.

Traditionally, the peppers are sun-dried. A dehydrator works just fine too. Once dry, they can be crushed into flakes or ground finer depending on what you are making.

Other Culinary Uses

Gochu peppers can be used fresh, dried, or ground into flakes or powder. Flakes are probably the most familiar use.

Outside of kimchi, the peppers can also be sautéed, pickled, added to stews, or used in marinades. Mild heat means you can use a decent amount without overpowering everything else.

Growing Gochu Peppers

Start the seeds in a warm environment with a quality seed-starting mix. I use Burpee seed-starting mix from Menards. Sorry, non-Midwesterners!

Keep the mix evenly moist while the seeds germinate and give the seedlings plenty of light once they come up.

Final transplant should happen after the threat of frost is over. Better yet, wait until overnight temperatures are consistently 50°F or higher. If the plants were started indoors, make sure to harden them off before putting them outside full time.

Once outside, give them full sun, regular water, and decent drainage. Gochu is generally a productive and pretty straightforward annuum to grow.