Ultra-Simple Tteokbokki Recipe

For 1 serving.

All measurements use a regular tablespoon.

Ingredients

About 20–25 pieces of pre-cut rice cake

200–250 ml water

(If you want to turn it into rabokki, you need to add at least
100 ml more water, and gochujang is essential.)

1–1.5 spoonfuls of fine Korean red pepper powder

0.5 spoonful of beef Dashida

0.5 spoonful of anchovy Dashida

If you don’t have anchovy Dashida,

use 1 spoonful of beef Dashida instead.

MSG is optional.

Add according to your taste, but do not use more than 1 spoonful.

0.33 spoonful of sugar

0.66 spoonful of corn syrup

In other words,

corn syrup accounts for two-thirds of the sweetness.

Soy sauce, gochujang, black pepper, and other seasonings can be added
according to your taste,

but I recommend keeping each additional seasoning below 0.5 spoonful.

If you mix all the seasonings together first

and refrigerate the mixture for one or two days,

you can get a cleaner flavor.

This is because the raw smell of the red pepper powder has time to dissipate.

For vegetables,

use only green onions.

4–6 pieces of fish cake

For this amount,

that is usually about 0.5–0.75 of one large flat fish cake.

Cooking Method

Once everything is ready,

1. Add the water, rice cakes, prepared seasoning paste, and green onions together and bring to a boil.

A. Use a pan that is not too wide

so that the rice cakes are fully submerged in the water.

B. If you are adding any additional noodles or other ingredients,

add them from the beginning at this stage.

2. Watch for the rice cakes to start puffing up slightly.

3. Once you see them starting to puff up, reduce the heat.

This process can take longer than you might expect,

sometimes several minutes.

Stir occasionally while simmering

so the rice cakes don’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

Because homemade tteokbokki for one or two servings

needs to be finished by simmering down the sauce,

the taste immediately after reducing the heat

doesn’t mean much yet.

However,

if it is already too salty at this point,

that’s an emergency.

Right after puffing up,

the rice cakes will have lost much of their chewy texture.

But as you reduce the sauce over low heat,

some of that texture gradually returns.

Also,

as the rice cakes shrink back after expanding,

the spaces between the rice cake structure contract again,

allowing the sauce to seep further inside.

That is how you end up with tteokbokki

that is seasoned throughout the rice cake.

Be patient

and let it simmer over low heat.

4. Add the fish cake at the appropriate point.

If you boil fish cake for too long,

it will release more of its flavor into the tteokbokki sauce,

but it will lose its pleasant texture.

And once the fish cake has given much of its flavor to the sauce,

the fish cake itself loses much of its own distinctive taste.

That’s why I recommend adding it later.

If the seasoning is right but there is too much water

Make a small amount of starch slurry

using a little starch and water.

For one serving,

add only half a small coffee spoon of starch slurry.

I do not recommend adding dry starch powder directly to the tteokbokki.

Once everything looks about right,

turn off the heat

and eat your tteokbokki.

In some parts of Southeast Asia,

tteokbokki has become something people eat while it is continuously heated,

partly because of the popularity of tteokbokki buffets.

But that is not how it was originally served.

Traditionally,

when you ordered tteokbokki,

the woman running the snack bar would scoop the appropriate amount

from a large tteokbokki pan

into a small bowl for your order.

That’s it.