hello! Hi everyone, Wesley here. Today we're diving back into our series dedicated to Korean comfort food classics with a shot at the Korean tteokboki spicy rice cake. For those unfamiliar, tteokboki is a dish that most prominently makes use of gochugaru chili flake and gochujang chili paste to create its fire-y red sauce element, which is then used to simmer and coat our rice cakes, known as "tteok." Those following along may recognize that this is certainly not the first time that we have made use of these cylindrical rice cakes. A few weeks back we used the same cakes in our buldak recipe, as well as our rabokki recipe some time ago too.
Maybe more interestingly though, the Korean "tteok" rice cake is also the same cake that we refer to in Chinese cuisine as "nian gao," meaning that we'll be able to find these rice cakes in both Chinese and korean grocery stores, which is very useful. Traditionally, a tteokboki would be assembled by simmering the tteok in a dashi soup stock, using the slow simmer to draw out the starches of the rice cake to yield our thick and luxurious sauce element. For our version today however, I thought I'd toy around with making some crispy fried tteok, meaning that we'll be first wok searing out rice cakes before adding them to our simmer, yielding a fun crispy, crunchy quality to our tteokboki. Hope you try it.
Serves 2-3
INGREDIENTS
4 cloves garlic
1 inch (about 1 tbsp) fine minced ginger
3 green onions
1/2 medium white onion
4oz fish cake
8oz tteok
sesame seeds
peanut oil
INGREDIENTS (sauce)
4 tbsp low sodium soy sauce (or 2 tbsp full sodium soy sauce)
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp gochugaru
3 tbsp gochujang
INGREDIENTS (dashi stock)
2 cups water
1 sheet kombu
4-6 dried anchovy
PREP
CRUSH and mince the garlic, set aside
FINE MINCE the ginger, set aside
SLICE the green onions into planks, set aside
SLICE the onions, set aside
SLICE the fish cakes into squares, set aside
REHYDRATE the tteok in boiling water for 5 minutes, then strain and set aside
COMBINE all sauce ingredients, set aside
ON THE STOVE
BOIL all dashi stock ingredients for a minimum of 20 minutes, or ideally 1 hour
REMOVE the dashi stock solids, then set aside
HEAT a wok over medium heat, then add 4 tbsp peanut oil and long yao
ADD the tteok 15 pieces at a time, then sear for 2 minutes undisturbed before tossing and searing for an additional minute
REHEAT the wok as hot as possible, then add the garlic and ginger and bloom for 15 seconds until fragrant
ADD the onions and fish cake, then toss to combine for 1-2 minutes
ADD the green onions, dashi stock, and sauce mixture, then stir to combine
ADD the tteok and simmer for 5 minutes until a thick sauce forms
FINISH with sesame seeds