Tteokbokki Recipe – Korean Spicy Rice Cake Stir Fry

Tteokbokki is a super popular street food dish in Korea, thanks to a handful of superstar ingredients. This fiery tteokbokki recipe features mouthwatering Korean chilli flakes, gochujang spice paste and dashi stock, smothered over chewy rice cakes. Masshisoyo!

Why We Love This

We love tteokbokki because it is surprisingly easy to make at home. The stock base can be prepared in minutes, and will fill your kitchen with the mouthwatering aroma of Korean spices. With its blend of red chilli and fermented soybeans, gochujang paste gives this dish a distinctive fiery punch all of its own.

On top of all that is an extra scoop of Korean red pepper flakes to bring that saucy flavour and heat to an all-new level.

And finally, the ‘tteok’ in Tteokbottki are the chewy Korean rice cakes that soak up all that gorgeous sauce. You can use the flat rice cake or the tube tteoks!

 

 

What is Korean Tteokbokki?

Korean tteokbokki (sometimes romanised as dukbokki) is a spicy dish of chewy rice cakes in a thick chilli sauce made with a base of seaweed and/or fish stock known as dashi stock and gochujang red chilli paste.

As a shortcut, we recommend using powdered dashi stock (known as yuksu in Korean or dashi in Japanese), so you can satisfy those spicy Korean rice cake cravings FAST.

Where We Learned This Recipe

This feisty dish first exploded into our lives while roaming the streets of Nampodong in Busan, South Korea. Nampodong is MADE for wandering and eating and shopping – so naturally it was an irresistible lure for two hungry Wandercooks.

We knew the minute we found the tteokbokki hot spot. A spicy aroma filled the air as vendor after vendor worked at massive hot plates. Thick, spicy, saucy red tteokbokki surrounded us on all sides, some with boiled eggs thrown into the mix, others with green onion, slices of eomuk fish cakes and others with seafood.

Luckily for us, tteokbokki is not only available almost everywhere on the streets of Korea, it’s also super easy to make at home.

Which is very, very good news for the old spice lovin’ taste buds, don’t you think?

 

What you’ll need for this recipe

You should have at least some ingredients on hand for this, such as soy sauce, raw sugar, sesame oil and eggs. A few ingredients you may need to track down though are:

• Gochujang – this is the Korean Red Chilli Paste.
• Korean Red Chilli Flakes – these seem to have more flavour and less spice kick than regular chilli flakes, so if you’re substituting we’d recommend using only half the amount.
• Dashi stock – this gives the unique umami flavour to the dish. We’ve explained in a little more detail below so you can pick the right style for your tastes. In a pinch, you can substitute with vegetable or chicken stock. 
• Rice cakes aka tteok – you can find flat ones, tubular, fresh, frozen and dried! Get your hands on whatever you can. Fresh is best, with frozen a close second. 

All the above ingredients can usually be found at your local Asian supermarket or online.

What is the stock base for Korean Tteokbokki?

There are two styles of stock flavour you can use as a base for this Korean flat rice cake recipe:

• Konbu dashi – has a softer, seaweed based flavour
• Katsuo dashi – has an intense anchovy kick

For the best flavour experience we recommend the stronger anchovy version. The smell is strong (to say the least) while cooking, but doesn’t taste “fishy” in the final product – instead it gives the dish a mouth-watering umami kick.

 

How to Make Korean Tteokbokki – Spicy Rice Cake Stir Fry

Fire up a wok, add the water water and bring it to the boil with the dashi stock powder. Add in the gochujang, red chilli flakes, sugar and soy sauce and mix into a luscious, fragrant soup.

Pop in the rice cakes and bring back to the boil, then simmer for around 10 minutes until the rice cakes are softened. Keep an eye on the wok and stir frequently so nothing sticks. You’ll know it’s done when the sauce becomes thick and glossy and the rice cakes are nicely chewy (go on, test one, you know you want to!).

If the rice cakes aren’t soft enough, add in a little more water and continue to cook until ready.

Just before serving pour in the sesame oil and give it all a good stir.

Serve piping hot and delicious!

 

 

Cook’s Tips

• For the best chewy tteok texture be sure to soak the rice cakes in boiling water for a few minutes before cooking. Dried rice cakes may take a little longer, so you can either soak them slowly overnight, or speed up the process by soaking in boiling water for 10-20 minutes before cooking.
• Use flat rice cakes or tubes – they both taste the same!
• If you have leftover gochujang, there’s plenty of uses to get rid of the tub.

FAQs

How spicy is Tteokbokki?

Overall, Korean Tteokbokki is quite a spicy dish! We often eat this dish with a glass or two of water nearby, but it also goes amazingly with beer. This dish is a real mouth melter if made to traditional heat levels, which is awesome for all those spice lovers out there. We’ve toned our easy tteokbokki recipe down slightly, but if you need to reduce the spice even further you can cut back on either the chilli flakes and/or gochujang.

How do you make Tteokbokki sauce nice and thick?

The trick to a nice thick sauce is low to medium heat and patience! If that’s still not working, try adding a cornflour slurry of 1 tsp cornflour to 2 tsp cold water and mix it through.

Can you reheat tteokbokki?

Yes, we’ve had it for leftovers before and we generally recommend trying to eat everything by the next day. This is because the rice cakes do thicken up and soak up most of the sauce, so they end up losing their chewy texture and becoming a little mushy.

What other ingredients can you put in Korean Tteokbokki?

We love adding boiled eggs and fresh spring onion in ours but here are some other ideas if you want to amp up your dish. Why not try adding:

• kimchi
• chicken
• thinly sliced pork
• fish cakes
• ramen noodles
• cheese (incredible! Similar to our Korean Army Stew!)
• vegetables – cabbage, bok choy, broccolini, red bell pepper / capsicum would all be great additions
• sausage 

Variations & Substitutions

• You’ll usually find street tteokbokki made with long round rice cakes that look like chewy cylinders. But there are other varieties available such as the flat style rice cakes we used in our version. Korean tteok can often be found in local Asian grocery stores (we managed to find some in the middle of Amsterdam – and the gochujang to go with it!) so you should hopefully find some near you. But if you’re struggling to find them, you can easily swap for ramen noodles or two-minute noodles.

Want more magical Korean dishes? Here’s some ideas:

• Korean French Toast 
• Crispy Korean Kimchi Pancakes
• Korean Army Stew
• Korean Bulgolgi 

 

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