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
- 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.
- 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.
- Add all of the cabbage mixture to the skillet and roughly shape it into a rectangle with your spatula.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
Maangchi's Amazon picks for this recipe
It's always best to buy Korean items at your local Korean grocery store, but I know that's not always possible so I chose these products on Amazon that are good quality. See more about how these items were chosen.
This sandwich was WONDERFUL! Thank you so much for the recipe! It was a little sad on my tiny slices of gluten free bread but it was like a party in my mouth. Thank you, thank you! This is going to be in my regular rotation.
I love this and make it frequently! So delicious! I usually use mayo instead of mustard, and sometimes I add a slice of cheddar cheese. Delicious!
Thank you, which toaster should i use?
I made this today gor lunch minus the ketchup. Super yummy.
Thank you so much Maangchi for this recipe. I really love this, add different ingredients also not bad.
Thanks Maangchi for the recipe.
Really love this toast.
Have make it several time for breakfast and lunch
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Hi everybody! I just made this for lunch and it was delicious! I didn’t have any carrot or green onion, so I’m sure it will be even better next time when I add that. I just cut the cabbage with a knife– next time I will use the peeler and try to get it finer. I also used a little mayo and gochujang on the bread (like I usually do with egg sandwiches) and just used a little sugar since the gochujang is a little sweet. I will definitely make this again! Very simple, easy, and satisfying. Even if you’re looking at this and thinking that a cabbage and egg sandwich sounds a little weird, give it a try!
Oh, wow… this sandwich was fantastic! It might be my favorite of the dozen or so Maangchi recipes I’ve tried. It’s like… take a grilled cheese sandwich, replace the cheese with tasty healthy veg, but then fry it anyway and throw some sugar on top for good measure! As others have said, the sugar and condiments totally make it all work. And really… it *is* healthier than just eating grilled cheese. A little bit.
I made this with thick-cut milk bread I got from a Japanese bakery, which was amazing, but multi-grain/wheat would be great too. Getting the right combination of size and squishiness could be a little tricky at Western supermarkets. A bread machine’s taller loaves might actually be perfect here. I mayo’d one side of the bread slices because that’s always awesome. I agree with another comment that having a separate skillet for the bread helps to avoid burning it. And a big electric skillet would be really helpful if you’re doing 4+ sandwiches. I also think a dash of sriracha or other hot sauce would be worth trying.
OK… now I just always have to keep a cabbage around and then I can make this for lunch whenever I want. Totally awesome sandwich. Thanks Maangchi!
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Congratulations! I should make this soon for myself! : )
Hi,
I used the sugar, the ketchup, and the mustard you recommended. Loved it. I also tried it with the addition of a little bit of mayo to the sugar, ketchup, and mustard. Also really tasty. Thanks for this great way to eat more cabbage!
Woke up late like middle of the day :-P and just had to find something quick to make for brunch^^_^^ so this was how the finish one looks hahhaha…
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Again, PLEASE post more street food recipes. This toast recipe was the highlight of my day. I missed it so much!
Thank you so much Maangchi for this recipe.
I visited Korea last Summer and did not get a chance to eat this street sandwich you mentioned…we loved it as a family after following your easy recipe. My son who can be particularly picky when it comes to Korean food, gobbled it all up! It’s savory, filling and healthy. We used vegan butter and combined purple and regular cabbage. Adding our choice of hot sauce also gave a nice kick.
More than anything, as a Korean-American, I’m so proud of your journey and how influential you have been to teach me and everyone worldwide how delicious and easy Korean cooking can be. You’re always fun to watch…makes me want to cook more often for my family and others. Go Maangchi!♥️
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first, your knife skills are amazing. I learned a lot just by watching your video
I had a lot of fun making this. I did three expiraments and I can definitely recommend them all.
first, I shredded the cabbage and cut up the other veggies.
for the first one, I mixed everything together right before I cooked it. lots of extra time spent. for the second one I went ahead and measured the remaining cabbage and made sure that the amount of other ingredients was correct and measured 2 cups into a bowl and added the egg and then mixed it in, fried the cabbage patty just right and fried the bread in a separate pan. (the bread needs a lower temp than the cabbage)
I had enough for 3 more. I put the veggie ingredients into the fridge in a bowl over night. this made all of it a bit softer and easier to work with (no more massaging the cabbage needed) for sandwich 3 and 4 I mixed the veggie mixture in a separate bowl with ketchup, mustard, sugar, and egg. I found this to be faster than applying the condiments at the end and also got a more uniform flavor to the final product.
as far as mustard goes, I tried dijon, yellow, and horseradish mustard. I really liked the horseradish for the extra zip it gave.
do they ever put gochujang on this?
Thank you for this and all the rest of your recipes that you’ve shared with us :)
My hubby is gluten free so I made this as a kind of savory pancake without the toast and added some GF soy sauce, ginger and garlic. Served with Sriracha ketchup, yellow mustard and mayo for dipping.
This sandwich is the stuff legends are made of!
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Yay! Congratulatios!
Second attempt much better!!!
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This was so delicious and EASY! Thank you for your wonderful recipes! My husband made this for his breakfast and kindly offered me half, and then got upset when I ate the WHOLE half haha I guess he just wanted me to try it! Oops, it was too good not to eat it though! Stay healthy!!
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You have a cool husband! : ) It looks so delicious!
Our ketchup was sweet enough, so I left out the sugar. I might have added some if we had mustard. This was so easy and delicious! It may become my go-to snack.
Super good!! Thank you, Maangchi
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Yep! It looks super tasty plus very colorful!
Cabbage!
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Wha? What does it mean? ok, I assume you are going to slice it and make the street toast! lol!
Aww… same as the previous poster. Quarantine so I can’t get cabbage! I used to eat this toast every morning for breakfast when I lived in Kangnam! I want it! Thank you for posting this. More than anything else, I miss Korean STREET FOOD. Please post more street food recipes!
We are in quarantine so I can’t get cabbage right now. But a friend is shopping tomorrow and I will add cabbage to the list of food she will bring us! I can’t wait to have this for dinner tomorrow night! This looks amazing!!!
I got a cabbage! My friend found this huge, fresh cabbage for me! I was so surprised when she brought it. Making this for my husband for lunch right now! I will tell you what we think. ❤️
My husband and I devoured these. Even my teenage daughter thought this was awesome. She was surprised because I had to convince her to try it, and then she loved it. New lunch in our house! We raise chickens, ducks and geese. Normally we sell the eggs, but right now we are under quarantine so we haven’t been. We have been trying to eat up eggs, and this was a great recipe to do that with.
I don’t eat dairy because of my asthma. So we use the Country Crock plant butter, and it worked great. I also use sweet potato instead of carrot because I had one partially used in the fridge. I don’t think this made it taste any different.
We were a little leery of the catsup and mustard. But man. It really does it. I also thought my first couple of bites were ok…and then it was like the aftertaste took over and it was magical.
I made three of these, so I tripled the recipe. Then I scooped a heaping cup for each one and it was perfect. I got better at flipping them. I found leaving them on the burner for about five minutes helped with this, but that meant they were more darkly cooked and crispy that Maangchi’s in the video. It didn’t affect the taste. It was awesome.
Also, I cleaned the plan after making each one. I think this is important. Otherwise you could get some kind of burnt taste and the butter might start tasting off.
Thank you Maangchi!