An Asian Twist on Comeback Sauce

Funny how these ideas start.

It was a conversation about gochujang, the Korean chili sauce. I fell in love with it several years ago when I discovered it at Wally World in the Asian foods section.

I started keeping it in my regular pantry rotation to use in sauces and marinades, in particular for making Korean bulgogi, a flavorful beef dish that you will return to time and again.

Alas, I have lamented gochujang’s disappearance from Wally’s shelves for quite some time now. Like those cotton candy grapes they have for about five days once per year, I walk slowly past the section, confirm its absence, then continue on with less spring in my step. Oh, how thou hast forsaken me, Wally World!

Our friend LeAnne recently posted a food pic with a cabbage slaw and gochujang-mayo sauce. She used a recipe from Bon Appetit. Chili sauce and mayo. I immediately made the connection between the gochujang-mayo and Comeback’s chili sauce-mayo recipe requirement and wondered aloud: “What if?”

LeAnne’s reply: “Like an effing umami bomb!”  

I sought that answer, and LeAnne was right. I flipped several of Comeback’s required ingredients to their Asian counterparts, and the result is fantastic.

If you are not from Mississippi or the South, Comeback Sauce has a variety of uses: delightful on salads as a dressing, as a dipping sauce for chicken or anything fried, and as a condiment for sandwiches and such. Essentially, it is Mississippi’s version of a remoulade, or it’s akin to Thousand Island dressing without the pickles, but with more heat and a garlicky and oniony bite.

Here, like LeAnne, I used it in a slaw.

If you haven’t made Comeback before, note that you will find many versions out there. There is an historic version with a curry bent, which is fine with me as a novelty, but I would much rather encourage the heat and bite innate to the non-curry styles.

Oxford chef and restauranteur John Currence makes the standard Comeback version that I like the most – raw onion and garlic instead of their powdered counterparts, though I do reduce his ketchup requirement and up the chili sauce in its place. That’s one great thing about Comeback – it’s flexible.

You can find Mr. Currence’s recipe by Googling “John Currence Comeback Sauce” and selecting the James Beard Foundation blog link. 

So, ultimately, here is a recipe twist on an old Mississippi standard. Note that the sesame oil and fish sauce are optional. They are there to replace the traditional paprika and add a nice, albeit subtle, background flavor, but they are not required, especially if you would have to buy those ingredients just to use for this.

Watch that pocketbook. And enjoy …

Asian Twist Comeback Sauce

1 ¼ cups mayonnaise
¼ cup gochujang chili sauce
2 TB shallot, minced
1 TB minced garlic
1 TB freshly squeezed lime juice
1 tsp soy sauce (see note about salt)
1 tsp prepared spicy mustard
2 TB olive oil
½ tsp fish sauce (optional)
¼ tsp sesame oil (optional) 

Whisk all the ingredients in a bowl if you want the shallot and garlic bits to really pop. Or you can add all ingredients except oil to a blender and blend for about 20 seconds, then stream the oil in and blend until thoroughly combined. Pour into a Mason jar or other container and refrigerate for at least an hour before serving. If it can sit overnight, even better.

For the Asian slaw, I mixed one 16 oz. bag of pre-shredded, tricolor slaw with 1 cup of the Asian Comeback. If you like a less saucy slaw, start by adding ¾ cup then judge to your liking. Allow prepared slaw to cool and soften in the refrigerator for at least an hour before serving.

The recipe yields a little more than 12 oz. of sauce/dressing so you will have some left over if you are using it to make slaw as I described, or you can use 24 oz. of pre-shredded tricolor slaw from two bags to use the entire recipe of sauce/dressing.

In talking to Maggie about the recipe, she mentioned some great other pairings for the sauce: drizzle on top of an Asian rice bowl with fried chicken and kimchi, as a sauce for tempura-fried green tomatoes and shrimp, and on pulled pork nachos with mozzarella and cilantro. Yum! She had me at fried green tomatoes. Make a fried green tomato po'boy with bacon and cool, crisp lettuce, drizzle some sauce on, and you will never look at a BLT the same way again.

NOTE ABOUT SALT: I used regular soy sauce (not low sodium) and did not need to add salt. If you use a lower sodium soy sauce, you may add more soy sauce to taste or you may want to add salt at the end. Taste along the way, and you can’t go wrong.