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 tteokbokki and just kept stirring and stirring it, making it more and more delicious over time. We would stop by and they would give us a small paper cup of spicy rice cakes dripping the spicy, slightly sweet sauce for a very reasonable price that any student could afford. We just couldn’t resist it! The sauce is fiery hot and a little sweet, and the rice cakes don’t have much taste but they are a little soft and a little gooey.
For a lot of my readers who’ve never had it before, it looks like pasta in tomato sauce, but it doesn’t taste like that at all.
When I lived in Korea I learned the secret to making good tteokbokki from a famous place in the 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 prepared it right in front of us, so I saw she first made an anchovy stock from dried anchovies. I made tteokbokki at home and found it made a huge difference in flavor. 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 the Romanized English spellings of tteokbokki (떡볶이): ddeokbokki, dukbokki, tteok-bokki and on and on. A few years ago the Korean government tried to standardize the name as “topokki” and even asked me to change it everywhere on my website! It just sounded weird to me so I never did it. How do you pronounce it? The first two t’s are a hard t, and the eo sounds more like a u.
There are also many variations of the tteokbokki recipe too: some people add dumplings (mandu), some add cabbage, cheese (mozzarella cheese seems popular), or ramen noodles. Creamy, saucy rosé tteokbokki was popular for a while, and a few hundred years ago the Korean royal court enjoyed nonspicy, soy sauce based gungjung tteokbokki. This version below of the spicy Korean rice cakes is an authentic classic and my favorite. Everyone loves it, so let’s make tteokbokki!
Ingredients
- 1 pound of cylinder shaped rice cake (tteok), fresh or frozen, 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
Cook time: 15mins for the anchovy broth and 10-15mins for tteokbokki
- 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 spicy mixture in the bowl, the green onion, and the optional fish cakes and hard boiled eggs. The stock will be about 2½ cups.
- When it starts to boil, stir gently with a wooden spoon. Let it simmer and keep stirring it until the rice cake turns soft and the sauce thickens and looks shiny. It should take about 10 to 15 minutes. If the rice cake is not soft enough in that time, add more water and continue stirring until it softens. Freshly made rice cakes will soften faster so if you use frozen rice cakes, thaw them out and soak them in cold water first, to soften them up before cooking with them.
- Remove from the heat and serve hot. If you have any leftovers, keep them in the fridge and reheat them when you want to eat. They won’t be as good as when you first made them, but not bad. You should finished them in a few days, but it’s best to eat them all at once right after you make them.
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Hello Maangchi, today I made this dish, I added shrimp and toasted sesame, the end of the world ..
I have followed many of your recipes, I have already done yesterday, today I did Garaeddeok (a bit ‘too dry, next time I’ll do better), I’m preparing Chapssalttok, only the stuffing I like so much.
I’m happy, they have subtitles that very well and helped me a lot.
Thank you
hi maangchi, just wanna thank you for this recipe, i used it for business and many loves it, but can i have a favor i really wanted to eat RABOKKI as i seen on Korean Dramas. can you make a video of it? i watch many videos of rabokki on how to cook it but i really wanted if its you hehe .thankyou i hope you will reply
I once ate this dish in a Korean restaurant when I was in London and I couldn’t get it out of my mind ever since!
I followed your instructions without the eggs and fish cake and I have to say the taste is just as I remember it! Thank you for the recipe! ♡
I’m glad you enjoyed your tteokbokki, it looks delicious!
Dear Maangchi-ssi!
Over months I’ve been watching your wonderfully inspiring videos now…
And not only have I been cooking corean food for my family (six children and my husband and also for my mother and her husband) – all recipes coming from your blog – but I’ve also made german videos presenting your corean recipes on my Youtube Channel Sugarprincess and posted the recipes in german on my blog to introduce your wonderful recipes to my readers. So now I wanted to say thank you again and let you know…
One of my favourite dishes is your Tteokbokki – and you can see that I have followed your recipe in almost all steps…
If you visit Heidelberg some day… be very welcome to my house and we’ll cook and eat together!
Many, many greetings from far away Germany!
Yours, Yushka
Sugarprincess.de – Blog and Youtube
Oh, that’s great! Good luck with your YouTube channel!
Hey Maangchi. Thank you for encouraging my love of Korean food. My local Korean grocer was initially surprised when I would turn up with my kids looking for ingredients to your recipes. Now she spoils my kids when we show up. I’m making your tteokbokki recipe tonight, and my Egyptian husband can’t wait to take it to work tomorrow to show his Korean coworkers. They all sit together and talk about how good Korean food is. Thanks again for all your amazing recipes.
I hope that your Korean cooking is still going well!
Hi maangchi, I love you recipe. So far I did try 2 of your fantastic recipe recently. 1st time I try to make some kimchi & it really good. All the kimchi that I made finished eating within 2 months. I thought it will be fermented for some times. But I just can’t stop eating that. Hahahahaha. & now I cooked rice cake during Christmas Eve but I did modified your recipe a bit & it turn out very tasty. My friend & i enjoy it very much. Thank you so much of your idea recipe. It really taste of Korean food. Hope in future I can keep trying to cook some of the other delicious food & see more often of your post. Thank you maangchi.
So I used 5 tablespoons of the fish sauce and it is great! Thank you so much for all your recipes. My mom doesnt have time to show me when I ask for dishes, she just makes them for me. I dread thinking that when she passes, my one connection I have to my Korean roots will be gone……but then Maangchi I found your site! Thank you so much it means a lot!
“my one connection I have to my Korean roots will be gone……but then Maangchi I found your site! ” I am very touched by your words. Thank you very much!
My mom does not make it this way but I am going to try it because this is my favorite dish. I wonder if fish sauce will give the same results. I am learning different uses for it. My mom uses it in everything just about! I am doing it now so we will see!
Is it really necessary to take the heads and intestines out of the anchovies? Seems like I can just use the whole fish if I want, right? Thanks for this recipe!
You can use the whole fish if you want, but it my experience it turns out a little bitter and greyish and cloudy.
Hey Maangchi, is it okay to use canned anchovies instead of dried? Would the broth be the same?
No, you can’t use canned anchovies, they are wet and salty and oily. Dried anchovies are used for making stock. Good luck!
Maangchi it’s my first time making 떡볶이. Well, it’s my first time making anything Korean. I usually just watch your videos but now I can finally cook something. My Korean friend sent the frozen 떡 to me. I’m so excited to try this recipe!! Wish me luck I hope I do well and make you proud ^^
How did your tteokbokki turn out?
This recipe has become a staple for me and my friends. Always delicious!
Hi Maangchi,
I’ve done your tteokbokki recipe a lot of times and always love it. But I am pregnant right now and can’t have spicy food.. how much brown sugar should I add if I were to make this? Or should I lessen the chilli paste too? But I’m afraid the taste might differ if I do.. (I don’t normally put in pepper flakes so this is out of the question)
Hope you read this and reply.. just saw some tteokbokki photos on facebook and craving right now!
Thank you so much!
Lea
I’m interested in trying this recipe and I’m wondering how long the prep time is. Also how many servings is this recipe?? Much Thanks!
I would say 2-3 people.
Can I use beef broth cubes instead of the anchovies ?
Yes, you can use it. Whatever is used, if the broth is tasty, the tteokbokki will taste good.
How many broth cubes did you use?:)
I always use 1 and if its bland I put another 1/2 cube
I made and ate my first Tteokbokki today and I liked it! Thanks for the recipe Maangchi! I just made some revisions – didn’t add pepper flakes anymore, added more sugar and added a little white vinegar since the gochujang was hotter than my family can tolerate. I used fresh garatteok from our local Korean store. I will try to make my own garatteok next time.
Hi, Maangchi. its my first time making tteokbokki. Are they suposed to taste spisy and sweet or I can ad salt? :) I didnt use the fish cakes in the recipe as I didnt have them.
It supposed to sweet and spicy.. But gochujang(hot pepper paste) already taste salty..
I usually add soy sauce if want to be abit salty, and its smell really good..
Try to change the fish cake with fried thin ham.. its also good.. ;)
Hi Maangchi! I need your help! I bought frozen rice cakes few months ago from korean grocery store and I decided to make this today. But when I got it from the freezer, I saw the 2017.7.28 expiration date on the bag. It’s already August 21, 2017 and almost a month sinice it ‘expired’. Can’t I use it anymore? Pls help me! Thankyou!
If it was frozen all this time, and it looks fine, it should be ok to use.
Hi!
I tried your recipe and it was very good!! The only question I have is how to make the rice cake absorb the sauce better? It did not feel like the rice cake absorbed any of the sauce.
Thanks you!
You won’t have much luck getting the rice cakes to absorb the sauce since they are so solid, but you can maybe try making the sauce thicker so that more of it stays on the rice cake instead. Just a thought.
I have found some dried rice stick that recommends soaking overnight. I’m curious if this can be skipped by using a pressure cooker? I haven’t been able to find any advice for or against. Any help would be appreciated!
Made the broth with the small dried anchovies, they sell here. About 15 like you recommended. And the kelp. The sauce turned out to be deeeply delicious! Thanks Maangchi
I’m happy to hear that you like the broth made with anchovies. Yes, I always use dried anchovies to make tteokbokki. Yours looks so delicious! Even the egg looks amazing!
Hi! Maangchi! Is it okay to make this without the dried kelp and hot pepper flakes? Thank you!
Thanks Maangchi! I made this with my grandma and we had lots of fun, there was a little trouble with the garaeddeok dough (how do you spell it haha) so it’s not that evenly sized, but it’s still so delicious, and also by the way, my grandma made a few twists to it, like adding cheese flavouring to the dough and replacing anchovies with anchovy fish sauce. She tried to make it many times before but only your recipe works Maangchi! Thanks again!
I’m so happy to hear that you and your grandma work together to make nice, delcious, tteokbokki! What a lovely scene!
hi maangchi. thanks for your perfect resipe. Here is the tteokbokki that I cooked. this was my first korean food. and I made rice cake and fish cakes myself.
Congratulations! I’m so impressed that you made such delicious tteokbokki with your homemade rice cake and fish cakes!
I got the short grain rice flower its wow now and its sooooo spicy and chewy
Amazing! I can see the rice cake looks so smooth and chewy!
I didnt know that it tastes delicious with beef and noodles thanks maangchi ❤
Hi Maangchi,
I love your recipe for tteokbokki. The anchovy/kelp broth adds a wonderful depth. I also want to add that your youtube channel is brilliant. Korean food makes me feel so happy. Yesterday I cooked tteokbooki, miyuk soup, a seaweed side dish and doenjang stew. Yes, I kind of went overboard. It is the best comfort food during Melbourne’s cold weather.
Thank you for inspiring me. It also helped that KT Mall opened up nearby with all the relevant ingredients. I’m still deliberating if I should make jajangmeyon today, or pace myself!
What I love about Korean food is not only the variety, but the combination of vegetables, spice and garlic.
Thank you for being such a wonderful teacher.
안녕하세요?
Maangchi,, today I’ll make Tteokbokki but I don’t have dried anchovies and kelp what can I use instead of it?
Thank you ❤️❤️
Thats the best time I did it its awesome and sooo chewy so spicy and it melts inmy mouth
Your tteokbooki looks so spicy, savory, juicy, and chewy! Yum!
Another new recipe. Got my super size rice cakes from a special stand near the supermarket. This is really good. And it really does remind me of the texture of mozzarella sticks. I went straight rice cakes for this first try. Hard to describe the flavors as savory and sweet compete for my attention.
I’ve made this so many times using your recipe and will continue doing so! Each time I tried different types of fish cakes :) and I always add noodles (my husband loves it!). Thank your for the recipe!
I decided to make tteokbokki today for my daughter and I am going to serve it to her as part as her Valentine Dinner. It is a bit sweet but once you eat about 5 pieces the hot hits the back of your throat and lips from the sauce. My daughter likes the tteokbokki sauce thick so I cook it a little longer than what is said.
It looks so yummy! “My daughter likes the tteokbokki sauce thick so I cook it a little longer than what is said.” You did a great job!
Nummy!! I didn’t have anchovies, so I used dried shitaki mushrooms instead. Not an egg fan, so omitted those. It tastes great!
Yum!
Hello! 안녕하세요!
I just finished now with my tteokbokki. It’s yummy but i’m sure i can do it better later so i will keep making it. ;) I didn’t have anchovy and kelp so i used my mom’s bone soup for broth.
It’s my first time making tteokbokki but not the first time eating it.
Thank you Maangchi for inspiring with the recipe! ^^
Tried this today. Made the rice cake yesterday, and boiled it with sauce this afternoon. So yummy! Used bonito flakes since I don’t have anchovy. Mmmmmm!
wow, it looks very tasty with delicious looking broth! You made this with your homemade rice cake! Fantastic!