Street toast

I hope all of you are safe and stay healthy during these pandemic times. I’m doing well so far and I never go out except for grocery shopping. As long as I have a big bag of rice, a large quantity of fermented kimchi, potatoes, onion, garlic, dried beans, and Korean essential ingredients like gochujang, doenjang, and pickled vegetables, I don’t need many more groceries.

So this time I wanted to share my Korean street toast recipe with you. It is steamy hot, sweet, sour, juicy, and crispy with buttery toasted bread. It is not only delicious but very filling, so you can eat it as a meal! Most of all, it has a lot of cabbage so it makes me feel so healthy!

When I was in university in Seoul, I used to buy this street toast from a vendor on the sidewalk. She cooked it right in front of me in her tent. She brushed and melted a big chunk of margarine on the griddle and then made a kind of omelette-looking patty and toasted the bread there too. She never forgot to sprinkle white sugar and drizzle ketchup on top. It was a good breakfast along with the sweet and nutty instant coffee she made. That’s my memory about Korean street toast decades ago!

When I visited Korea a couple of years ago, I tasted so many different kinds of Korean street food. I found this style of street toast so interesting because it uses a lot of shredded cabbage and it looked super easy to make! The vendor was cooking it in front of me, adding lots of sugar and ketchup just like the vendor in my old memories. She wrapped it and rolled it in tin foil and gave it to me, which was different from the old way, just putting on the plastic plate.

I hope you guys make this at home and enjoy the taste! You can modify some ingredients as you like, but I wanted to show you the real traditional Korean street toast!

Ingredients

Makes 1 serving

• 5 to 6 ounces shredded cabbage
• about 2 tablespoon sliced onion
• 2 green onions, sliced diagonally
• about 1 tablespoon carrot matchsticks
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 2 slices of milk bread (or multi-grain bread), 4 to 5 inches
• About 1 to 2 tablespoons unsalted butter for cooking
• 2 teaspoons sugar (or 0 calorie natural sweetener swerve
• 1 to 2 tablespoons ketchup
• 1 tablespoon yellow mustard, optional

Directions

1. Combine cabbage, onion, green onion, and carrot in a medium-sized bowl. Grab and release the mixture with your hand to soften everything a bit. Add the salt. Crack the egg and mix it in well with a spoon.
2. Heat a large skillet over medium high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and rub and melt about 1 tablespoon butter in the skillet to coat it evenly.
3. Add all of the cabbage mixture to the skillet and roughly shape it into a rectangle with your spatula.
4. Cook for about 2 to 3 minutes over medium heat. Keep shaping the patty until the bottom turns light brown and crispy. The dimensions should be just a little larger than a slice of your bread.
5. Turn it over with the spatula and add more butter if needed. Meanwhile melt some butter on a corner of the skillet and toast 2 pieces of bread until both sides turn lightly crispy.
6. Cook and shape for another 2 to 3 minutes over medium heat until the both sides of the cabbage patty is golden brown and a little crispy.
7. Place 1 piece of bread on a large plate. Add the cooked cabbage patty. Sprinkle the sugar over top and drizzle the ketchup and mustard (if used).
8. Add the other piece of bread and serve right away. You can put it on a plate, and cut it in half if you like, or eat it street style, by rolling it up gently in tin foil, and serving like a burrito.