Korean Royal court stir fried rice cakes

Hello, everybody!

We’ve been learning about Korean tteokbokki for over a month now! We learned how to make garaetteok from scratch, which is used to make hot spicy tteokbokki, rice cake soup, and today’s recipe: Gungjung-tteokbokki, or royal court stir fried rice cake. It’s a non-spicy dish and calls for a variety of colorful vegetables, mushrooms, and marinated beef.

Gungjung-tteokbokki is actually the original tteokbokki and is very different than the more well-known red, spicy version. It has a lot more ingredients, for one, and it’s stir fried and it’s made with soy sauce. It was originally served in the royal court during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) and was considered to be a very fancy haute cuisine. This was before hot peppers were introduced or popular in Korea, so it isn’t spicy at all.

After gochujang was developed, a lot of people added it to Gungjung-tteokbokki to make it spicy. But after the Korean war (1950-1953) a small store in Sindang-dong Seoul got famous by selling a cheap snack of spicy tteokbokki made with flour-based rice cakes. This eventually became the spicy tteokbokki that’s so popular today.

Enjoy the recipe! My tteokbokki series is finished now. I’ll meet you guys with a new recipe soon!

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

• 1 pound garaetteok (cylinder shaped rice cakes for tteokbokki) store bought or homemade
• 3 oz (100 grams) beef brisket
• 2 egg yolks, beaten with a pinch of kosher salt
• 1 Tablespoon cooking oil
• ½ teaspoon toasted sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds
• 4 teaspoons soy sauce
• 1 Tablespoon rice syrup (or sugar or honey)
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• ½ teaspoon of ground black pepper
• 1 Tablespoon of pine nuts, chopped (optional)

For marinade:

1. 1 garlic clove, minced
2. ½ teaspoon soy sauce
3. ½ teaspoon honey (or sugar)
4. ¼ teaspoon of ground black pepper
5. ½ teaspoon toasted sesame oil

Vegetables:

• 2 cups white mushrooms, sliced into bite sized pieces
• ⅓ cup carrot, cut into matchsticks
• ½ cup green bell pepper, sliced into thin strips
• ½ cup red bell pepper, sliced into thin strips
• ½ cup onion, sliced

Directions

Prepare your ingredients:

1. Cut the beef brisket into matchsticks. Mix the marinade ingredients together and add the beef. Keep in the fridge.
2. Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Beat the yolks and add a pinch of salt.
3. If you buy frozen rice cakes, thaw them out. And if your rice cakes are really big and thick, you should soak them in water for 5 minutes so they will soften up during cooking. The rice cakes I used in this video were small enough that they didn’t need to be soaked.
4. Slice the vegetables and mushrooms, as described above.

Make gyerannoreunjajidan (yellow egg yolk strips) to use as a garnish:

1. Add a few drops of cooking oil to a heated non-stick pan. Wipe off any extra hot oil with a paper towel.
2. Turn the heat down very low. Pour the egg yolks into the pan and tilt it in different ways so the yolks spread thinly and form a sheet at the bottom.
3. Turn off the heat and let the thin egg sheet finish cooking on the residual heat of the pan. When it’s 70% cooked flip it over and let it cook on the other side.
4. Slice the yolk sheet into strips and set it aside.

Put it all together:

1. Heat up a skillet and add 2 teaspoons of cooking oil, 1 clove of minced garlic, and the marinated beef. Stir for a few minutes until the beef is half cooked.
2. Add all the sliced vegetables and mushrooms. Stir for 1 minute.
3. Add the rice cakes, ½ cup water, 4 teaspoons of soy sauce, 1 Tablespoon of rice syrup (or honey or sugar), and ½ teaspoon of ground black pepper. Keep stirring for 2 to 3 minutes until everything is juicy and shiny and the rice cake softens.
4. Add 1 teaspoon of toasted sesame oil before removing from the heat. Transfer to a plate and garnish with sesame seeds, the yellow egg yolk strips (gyerannoreunjajidan), and chopped pine nuts if you have them.
5. Serve hot.