Making Sense of Making Jjajangmyeon

An Illustrated Story of Culinary Visual Sensemaking

In my two most recent posts, I shared professional examples of how I’ve organized for understanding, in everyday scenarios. First, I shared a map I created to make sense of ‘WHAT Does A Product Manager Actually Do?’ Then, I shared The PEECE Framework I created to organize my concerns with AI.

Today, I’m sharing a third example of how I organize for understanding. This example was more of a… personal challenge. Specifically, how I recently made sense of preparing jjajangmyeon, a common Korean (by way of Chinese immigrants to Korea in the 19th century) dish.

For the uninitiated, jjajangmyeon is…

…a Korean-Chinese dish of thick noodles covered in a rich, fermented black bean sauce and served with vegetables and pork. The savory, salty, and slightly sweet dish is a cultural icon in Korea.

Mmm. Delicious. [Source]

From the pictures alone, I was intrigued. And after reading descriptions that described the sauce as having an “almost caramel taste” and how when combined with the “thick, chewy wheat flour noodles noodles [this] makes for a really unique taste and texture” — I knew I had to try this dish!

Unfortunately, Korean food is notoriously difficult to navigate as a vegetarian. While I’m a bit more relaxed about my diet (I still eat seafood), my spouse has been a strict vegetarian since junior high. And yes, there are Korean dishes you can order that don’t have meat, but anchovies and fish sauces are commonly used to add flavor to many dishes — even showing up in various banchan (salads and side dishes). So, trying jjajangmyeon at a restaurant was off the table.

Fortunately, it’s not hard to make vegetarian or vegan friendly versions of many Korean dishes. For my first pass at this dish, I used a recipe from The Korean Vegan (thank you, local library!).

Hey, look — they even feature jjajangmyeon on the cover!

NOTE: This post is about how I made sense of making jjajangmyeon — not a recipe for actually making jjajangmyeon (though the visual at the end of this post should orient you to preparing this dish, if it’s also new to you!). Unfortunately, I couldn’t find The Korean Vegan’s exact recipe for jjajangmyeon posted anywhere online 😕. But, here are some some other recipes for jjajangmyeon you can check out:

• Jjajangmyeon (Noodles in blackbean sauce)
• Korean Black Bean Sauce Noodles (Jajangmyeon)
• Jjajangmyeon (Korean Black Bean Noodles)

And a few vegan versions:

• The Foodie Takes Flight — Vegan Jjajangmyeon (Noodles in Black Bean Sauce)
• The Floured Camera — vegan jajangmyeon (korean black bean noodles)
• Brown Girl Vegan — Vegan Jjajangmyeon (Korean Black Bean Noodles)
• My Plantiful Cooking — Vegan Jajangmyeon (Korean black bean sauce noodles)

My first attempt:

As recipes go, this isn’t too difficult to follow. But, after reading through the directions, there were several things that were new to me:

• Pre-soaking dried shiitake mushrooms (1st time!)
• Working with chunjang paste (also, 1st time!)
• Working with potato starch (corn starch, potato starch — somehow I’ve made it to this point in my life having never made a slurry before!)

There were also some things I didn’t understand why I was doing:

• You “add soy sauce to deglaze the pan,” but… I still don’t quite understand this step — it didn’t seem to do anything!
• It suggested I use the leftover water from the soaking mushrooms… 🤨
• The cook time for tofu seemed too short a time, relative to how long I normally cook tofu
• Adding potatoes and onions later in the process felt wrong (I’m used to starting with these things, as they normally take longer to fully cook)
• Why was I cooking — then removing from the wok — the proteins; same with the vegetables. This part was a big pain and a mess (but I later learned you don’t actually need to prepare it this way!)

I’m sharing all these details to convey my lack of confidence in making this dish.

Fundamentally, I didn’t have a mental model for how to make jjajangmyeon. My experience with noodle dishes is very western, and mostly Italian influenced. The process described here was very different from any of the spaghetti or fettuccine dishes I’ve made!

So, for my first time making this dish, it was — to me — a very long list of 17 ingredients to prep, and a series of 8 instructions that I had to read through several times.

Most recipes, yes?

Other than closely following the recipe, I had very little understanding of how to think about what I’d be doing. If I were to illustrate how I was trying to make sense of this new-to-me recipe, it might look something like this:

Also, isn’t this most recipes?! Some — like this one — are more tangled than others.

I had no mental model for what I was doing, nor where I could modify things. No mental model = no agency. I was at the mercy of the recipe! I could let it hold my hand and guide me through the steps, but I really didn’t know what I was doing.

If we return to my post on too much information that teed up this series, I had a long list of information, but no understanding. I still lacked a way to organize the onslaught of information.

As I prepped the ingredients, and read through the recipe again, I started chunking things on the counter into the groups, arranged by how they would be used in sequence. (Had you been in my kitchen when I first made this, you would have witnessed me being very OCPD as I methodically prepped and lined up each and every ingredient, and measured out liquids in advance, in a very orderly fashion, before ever heating a pan!).

From my post on dealing with too much information.

It’s important to note, this chunking and sequencing — along with direct, hands-on experience — formed the basis for what what follows: The mental model that emerged for me.

I successfully navigated the dish, and for my first attempt, it wasn’t too bad. My biggest lesson was to add more liquid — my sauce was too thick. But, the flavors seemed spot on. Here’s a photo, though it doesn’t look great as I took this after I stirred things together. And I forgot to garnish with cucumbers!

Not bad for my first attempt!

A mental model begins to form…

It was a few days later, as I watched through several “how to make jjajangmyeon” videos, that I started to see the patterns, what things were flexible/modifiable, and what things were critical to making this dish.

From these videos, and my first-hand experience, I learned:

• I didn’t need to remove the proteins, and later veggies — I could just push these to the edges of my stir-fry pan! (See illustrations for this, below)
• It really is just proteins — my recipe called for shiitake mushrooms and tofu. A more traditional recipe will use pork belly. Really, any protein or combination of proteins will do. There are even versions with seafood.
• Veggies can also vary, though potatoes, zucchini, cabbage, and onions are commonly used. Several recipes I found didn’t add cabbage.
• ⭐ What makes jjajangmyeon, well… jjajangmyeon is the step where you gently fry the chunjang (black bean paste) in a pool of oil. This is the critical step, and where timing is important.
• The importance of simmering, with a closed lid!!
• The importance of rinsing the noodles in cold water
• The trick is to control the texture of the sauce by adding liquids and later adding starch. I’m still working on this!

I made this again a week later. Again, the flavors were good, but this time I added too much liquid, resulting in a runny sauce.

(From too thick to too runny! But, I’m learning…)

I did thicken later portions by adding gratuitous amounts of potato starch, but… I think I’m not doing something right. Hey, I’m still learning!

Okay, the moment you’ve been waiting for… The mental model that emerged for me from all this:

In this illustration, I’ve

1. Chunked the major steps (cook proteins, cook veggies, prepare sauce, mix together, add liquids, boil/simmer, add thickener, combine, garnish)
2. Abstracted away the specific ingredients (as these can vary)
3. Sequenced all this using a left to right sequence (a common way to think about time in western cultures) reinforced with arrows and lines.
4. Emphasized the sauce step!

Note, I didn’t literally draw this out, until now, and only for this post. But, this is a good representation of how I organized the information in my mind.

What initially tripped me was all the cooking and removing from heat. My mental image at this point was almost like preparing 3 different dishes, that are later combined into one:

Why?!

Learning that I could add in subsequent ingredients (as you do with most dishes), made a lot more sense to me:

Ahh… This feels right.

What follows after combining things is where I need to explore more. The thinning and thickening. Variations on flavors you can add during these stages (I need to play with adding more and different kind of sweeteners). The art of letting things simmer long enough. But not too long. 🤪

In the end, I now have a good mental model for how to prepare jjajangmyeon. I’ve still got a ways to go to perfect my craft, but I have an understanding of the general process. And, when I look across the various ways that people make jjajangmyeon, I have mental ‘shelves’ by which to organize — and assess — all of these recipe variations! This visual sensemaking has me feeling more confident about preparing this recipe.

I understand what I’m doing!