Tteokbokki is chewy rice cakes cooked in a red, spicy broth. It’s a popular Korean street food. When I was a student coming home from school it was hard to resist the spicy rice cakes sold by vendors on the street! They would have big vats of tteokbokkie and just keep stirring and stirring. We would stop by and they would give us a small paper cup of spicy rice cakes and the spicy sauce for a very reasonable price that any student could afford.
When I lived in Korea I learned the secret to making good tteokbokki from a famous place in a local market. It was run by an old lady who could always be found stirring her pot of tteokbokki, and there were always people lined up to buy it.
She was cooking right in front of us to I saw she made an anchovy stock from dried anchovies. That ingredient made a huge difference in the flavor, so I started using it when I made my tteokbokki at home. I once ran out of dried anchovies and made tteokbokki without it, and it didn’t taste at all like what I was expecting. So don’t forget to always make a good stock with dried anchovies when you make this! It totally makes this dish!
There are many variations of tteokbokki: some people add dumplings (mandu), some add cabbage, cheese, or ramen noodles, but this version below of the spicy Korean rice cakes is a classic and my favorite. Everyone loves it!
Ingredients
- 1 pound of cylinder shaped rice cake (tteok), bought or homemade. (Use a little more if you’re not adding hard boiled eggs and fish cakes)
- 4 cups of water
- 7 large sizedried anchovies,withheads and intestines removed
- 6 x 8 inch dried kelp
- ⅓ cup hot pepper paste (gochujang)
- 1 tablespoonKorean hot pepper flakes (gochugaru) aka “Korean chili flakes”
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 3 green onions (scallions), cut into 3 inch long pieces
- 2 hard boiled eggs, shelled (optional)
- ½ poundfish cakes (optional)
Directions
- Add the water, dried anchovies, and dried kelp to ashallow pot or pan.
- Boil for 15 minutes over medium high heat without the lid.
- Combine gochujang (hot pepper paste), gochugaru (hot pepper flakes), and sugar in a small bowl. Remove the anchovies and kelp from the pot and add the rice cake, the mixture in the bowl, the green onion, and the optional fish cakes and hard boiled eggs. The stock will be about 2½ cups.
- Stir gently with a wooden spoon when it starts to boil. Let it simmer and keep stirring until the rice cake turns soft and the tteokbokki sauce thickens and looks shiny, which should take about 10 to 15 minutes. If the rice cake is not soft enough, add more water and continue stirring until it softens. When you use freshly made rice cake, it takes shorter time. If you use frozen rice cake, thaw it out and soak in cold water to soften it before cooking.
- Remove from the heat and serve hot. If you have any leftovers, just keep them in the fridge and reheat them when you want to eat. You should finished it in a few days.
Posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007. Last updated on July 2, 2023.
Recipe type: rice cake, snack, spicy, street food
Tagged as cylinder shaped rice cake, ddeokbokki recipe, ddukbokki, 떡볶이 조리법, korean food, Korean recipes, korean snack, Korean spicy rice cake, Korean street snack, Maangchi recipes, spicy ricecake, topokki, tteokbokki, tteokbokki recipe
