Miso vs Doenjang

If you cook both Japanese and Korean recipes, you may have wondered: is doenjang the same as miso? These two fermented soybean pastes look similar at first glance, but they’re quite different in flavor, texture, and how they’re made.

Miso, a cornerstone of Japanese cuisine, is typically made by cooking and grinding soybeans and then fermenting the mixture with rice or barley koji and salt. This can then be further milled to produce a silky, deeply savory paste that can range from sweet and mellow (like Saikyo Sweet Miso) to bold and briny (like Red Miso). Japanese miso paste is delicate, complex, and often added at the end of cooking to preserve its aroma and probiotics. The texture and flavor make it versatile, seamlessly blending into soups, dressings, and marinades without overpowering the other ingredients. 

Doenjang is a Korean soybean paste traditionally made without the addition of grains or koji.  Cooked, crushed soybeans get formed into bricks before drying and fermenting for months. The dried bricks are then aged in crocks with salt water, which develops their distinctive chunky, rustic texture and robust, earthy flavor. Doenjang is well-suited for the intense flavor profiles of Korean cuisine, whether it’s added to stews like doenjang-jjigae, or mashed into piquant sauces like ssamjang.

So, can you substitute miso for doenjang? You can—especially if you use a darker, Aged Miso and add some extra salt. But the reverse isn’t as simple. Doenjang’s bold, pungent flavor can easily overwhelm the subtle, nuanced character of Japanese dishes, making it a less-than-ideal stand-in for miso.