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 size dried anchovies, with heads and intestines removed
- 6 x 8 inch dried kelp
- ⅓ cup hot pepper paste (gochujang)
- 1 tablespoon Korean 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 pound fish cakes (optional)
Directions
- Add the water, dried anchovies, and dried kelp to a shallow 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.
hi maangchi,
thanks for all the recipe and especially the video how to make.it helped me a lot bec i’m not a good cook and it is very difficult without someone showing it.
AND is it possible to make the rice cake(for ddukbokkie) by myself bec it is hard to find that.i have bought this flour called 가루찹쌀 but i can’t read it how to make.
thanks
Hi maangchi,i just finish made the kimchi,i m not sure how the taste yet. btw how should i keep the kimchi paste if i have made to much of the paste for the kimchi,the size of the cup i use is abt (height) 10 cm, so as a result extra paste for two cabbage.can i just keep it in fridge and continue tomorrow?besides,based on your video,1/2 cup of sweet rice flour require 1 cup of fish taste, i just follow the quantity but using my cup to measure it, is it ok with this ?
Welcome, G!
It’s wonderful! You can cook your own Korean food now. Let me know how it goes.
Hi Maangchi,
I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your site and videos! I’ve been wanting to learn how to make some Korean staples (such as soon dubu chigae and ddukbookie, for starters) for a very long time! And, since I can’t ask my mother to make everything I want to learn how to make, this is the best solution!
I just wish I could get Korean ingredients easily…I live in a part of France that’s not very racially diverse…but I still love it :)
Thanks again!
-G.
Jo Rose,
Please send me the picture of the dish that your friend took. I would like to see it. : )
Hi Maangchi!
I didn’t know it’s rice cake until now. :) I ate them once in a little eatery on the way back to Seoul from a pottery shopping with my Aunt. I can still remember it was raining a bit then so it was nice to hear you say that it’s good to eat it when it’s raining. :)
Oh, you know what, I tried cooking the bibimbap but I didn’t have the kosari available. It still tasted good though. We also had to cook a bit of the garlic since we know it will taste a bit spicy if we don’t. My housemate took pictures of it.
I’m going to try cooking another dish soon since my mouth gets watery every time I watch the podcasts.
Thanks for your show!
Best Regards,
Jo Rose
I made these and they were great! So simple and easy for a light snack or lunch. Are these ever served with fish or meat to make them more of a meal?
Thanks for the handy new recipe!
Thank you very much for your update!
hi maangchi! i tried your recipe, it was good! thanks a lot! :)
Hi,goblinlord,
It’s a good question! Yes, you can cook Ddeuk and fish cake together when you make dduk bokkie. I would suggest adding fish cake with dduk at the same time.
Wow, songpyun! I envy you now because you seem to taste the best songpyun in your friend’s house.
The sweet stuff in the songpyun could be made with sesame seeds powder and sugar, or beans with sugar. We usually use brown sugar for it.
Thank you!
Hi Maangchi ^-^,
My best friend in Korea who was a KATUSA in the Korean military made me ddukbokkie once. I seem to remember him making it with fish cakes in it. Do you know if you would put them in early with the ddok or latter after it is almost finished?
Also, I was wondering what exactly is the sweet stuff in Seongpyun? I went to spend Chu’sok with my friends family (the same one mentioned above) and they had Seongpyun there. It had to be the best rice cake treat I had ever had.
pilseung,
1 TBS of dried anchovy powder will be enough.
Hello maangchi,
is it okay to make it with powdered myeol chi? if so how much should i put?
Hi,Lillian,
good to hear from you again.
If you take ddukbokkie to your party, it will be very popular to koreans.
Thanks,
Oooh, I think I had these at a potluck! There were a number of Koreans there, and so much food I couldn’t keep track of who brought what. The dukbokkie were very popular–I think made with mussels in a slightly spicy sauce. I’ll have to try this one when I’m back near a Korean grocery store (I’ll be moving in December). Thanks again Maangchi, and thanks for the blog comments!