Creamy Gochujang Broth Bowls with Crispy Beef and Rice

Broth bowls, brothy rice, or whatever you want to call the trend of pairing steamed rice and some type of protein with a flavorful broth is my favorite food trend in years. This rendition combines caramelized sesame ground beef with a creamy gochujang broth. It’s spicy, umami, slightly sweet, and absolutely delicious.

Each serving has 36g protein with only 5g fat. Yes, only five grams of fat for a creamy broth and crispy beef topping!

Ingredient Run Down and Making Substitutions

If you’re a regular reader, you know I’m currently fixated on noodle bowls. And after making my recent gochujang noodles with blended low fat cottage cheese and gochujang, I knew the duo would make an awesome broth. (My assumption was correct.)

Not a fan of cottage cheese? I make miso peanut broth bowls with reduced fat coconut milk, peanut butter, miso ginger broth, and sriracha. The coconut milk would work great with gochujang as a creamy substitute.

While you can get everything to make these broth bowls at Trader Joe’s, the ingredients should be readily available at just about any grocery store.

There’s also plenty of flexibility in other components for the beef sauce like swapping coconut aminos for low sodium soy sauce, using honey or brown sugar instead of maple syrup, or even omitting things like miso paste if you have trouble finding it or are just unfamiliar with it.

I find these days I like adding an allium punch with the white parts of green onions instead of garlic. But if you’re a garlic lover, feel free to add a few cloves. The crispy hoisin beef in my beefy knife cut noodles calls for four frozen crushed garlic cubes. I love using the frozen cubes of crushed garlic and ginger as shortcut ingredients. You can get both at Trader Joe’s and other grocery stores.

And as a final note, there’s always the option to use other proteins. My air fried Korean chicken breast or simple garlic pepper chicken from my brothy rice protein bowls come to mind first as alternatives.

Feel free to leave any ingredient questions you might have in the comments section at the bottom of this post. I’m always happy to help!

Tips for Serving and Storing Leftovers

I kept the garnish game simple, but you may have some fat to play around with. Tossing cucumber (and maybe sliced radish) in a little chili oil with rice vinegar is always a way to punch things up. You can find a specific recipe and more ideas like pickled carrots, kimchi sauce, and half calorie rice in my Korean rotisserie chicken bowls.

Half calorie rice is probably a bad name for what I always recommend to anyone looking to make rice bowls with more volume. To make it, you simply mix steamed jasmine or basmati rice with riced cauliflower. In a 2:1 ratio, you hardly notice the cauliflower is there. It’s a great way to bulk up serving sizes while hardly adding any calories.

As for leftovers, I’ve tested both storing all the components together and storing the beef and broth on their own without rice. I prefer the latter. That way you can prepare fresh rice instead of the leftover rice absorbing a lot of the broth when stored together. There’s no wrong way to store and reheat, it’s just closer to the original eating experience this way.

So to recap, I like storing the beef and broth together in a container then microwaving for a few minutes to reheat. Then I’ll serve the reheated ground beef and broth over freshly prepared rice.

That’s everything you need to know. I hope you love the creamy gochujang broth and the caramelized beef as much as I do. Recipe reviews are always appreciated if you do.

Until we spice things up again. – Mason