Shit slaps im a good cook
for the sauce I fried up some minced mushrooms, onions, garlic, ginger, added soy sauce, ponzu, rice wine vinegar and lime juice, brown sugar, some garam masala, some cloves which made it too much cloves, some cayenne, some red chili flakes, some of the gochujang, some cholula hot sauce, and some thai chili garlic sauce, then I blendered that up with an immersion blender until super fine, cooked it to reduce, and added a little corn starch to thicken it. Also salt and pepper and a little fish sauce
for the steak I fried some blanched peanuts with garlic, added a little toasted sesame oil, added a little lime juice and soy sauce, blendered up that until super pastey, mixed that with gochujang (which I also fried in the pan), added a little salt and pepper and sugar and then smeared that on the steaks and let them sit for like 2 hours, then I pan fried them until medium rareish, rested, sliced super thin at a bias
the red cabbage was mixed with a portion of the steak rub gochujang peanut mixture
red onions and carrots pickled in lime juice (w/ salt, pepper, sugar, etc)
It's mostly the smell and the aftertaste. The texture's actually improved by light cooking (comparable to pickling, actually) and the flavor itself becomes mellower and more savory maybe? But it gains some really foul notes to it that then linger on and on and the smell is just awful. Adding it at the very end to hot food that was just removed from the heat seemed to work fine, cooking it just enough to get some of the good effects but without creating whatever foul byproduct actually cooking it creates, but the exact timing is finicky enough I don't like risking it.
Overall I strongly recommend quick pickling it a day or two in advance and then being careful with how much heat it's exposed to when adding it to food as the way to go imo. You get all the positive effects of cooking with none of the downsides, plus you can introduce other flavors directly into it like the savory warmth of dried tien tsin peppers or the pungent kick of shallots or onions.
Awesome. Thanks for the clear, solid advice.