Easy Korean Stir-fried Rice Cakes (Ganjang Tteokbeoki) – Asian Recipes At Home (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between tteokbokki and rice cakes? ›

Gukmul Tteokbokki 국물 떡뽁이 is a soupy version of spicy Korean rice cakes where the rice cakes usually are served in a bowl with a lot of Gukmul (broth) but other than that it's really nothing different. It's usually served with just the soupy sauce and tteok but usually no vegetables or fish cake.

The difference is that Japanese rice cakes are made from sticky glutinous rice while Korean rice cakes are made from regular non-glutinous rice. Since there are no real rules for making rice cakes, every region in Japan has its own traditional recipe.

Tteokbokki sauce is made of Korean red pepper paste (gochujang), Korean red pepper flakes (gochugaru), sugar, soy sauce, and garlic. It's traditionally combined with anchovy stock to create a flavorful base for rice cakes, but water or other stock can be used.

Do I need to soak tteokbokki rice cakes? If you have fresh rice cakes you don't need to soak them. If you are using ones that are packaged or frozen, give them a soak in warm water to loosen them up and rehydrate them a bit.

Tteok means rice cake and bokki stir-fried food. Combining these two words forms the term tteokbokki, or “stir-fried rice cake.” Ask Koreans what food makes them most nostalgic about their childhood and tteokbokki is the first thing they'll say.

Shanghai stir-fried rice cakes have a sweeter flavor due to the addition of hoisin sauce. Unlike the Korean stir-fried rice cakes recipe called tteokbokki, this Shanghai-style rice cake recipe is less spicy, sweeter, and has less sauce.

The scent of alcohol in such products come from culinary spirit. Trace amounts of culinary spirit were used to ensure that the rice cakes will be kept safe from contamination during the transit. However, culinary spirit is removed over the course of the cooking process, so it is safe for consumption.

A very common way to eat tteokbokki is any combination with twigim (tempura), mandu (dumplings), soondae (blood sausage), and odeng broth (fish cake broth). There are also variations of tteokbokki where the sauce is slightly different, like the new rose tteokbokki that has milk to make it creamy.

Though all rice cakes taste like pounded rice (even the ones made with brown rice vary little in their taste), the specific shape dramatically affects the texture. Thin slices are significantly less chewy than large, cylindrical rice cakes that are genuinely toothsome in the degree of their chewiness.

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.

Do Asians rinse rice before cooking? ›

"There will always be some husk left behind or some stones left behind, and that's another reason why they actually wash their rice," he says. "There is a tradition behind it and, because of this, it becomes common practice for a lot of Asian cultures."

While the spicy, saucy iteration of the dish is by far the most popular, you'll also find these tteok stir-fried with soy sauce (ganjang tteokbokki) and shallow-fried in oil (gireum tteokbokki).

If you can't find rice cakes, then you can always try making them with rice paper sheets. Sesame Oil. Toasted sesame oil (not the cold pressed kind) will help to tenderize and flavorize (is that a word?)

Rice Cakes

Unlike rice crackers, a plain rice cake is made from puffed whole-grain rice.

Tteok is just as diverse as mochi, and like the latter, it has some primary ingredients. Korean rice cake or tteok, is made from steamed flour. The flour can come from any type of grain, including glutinous rice. Unlike mochi, which can't be made with regular rice, tteok can be created with non-glutinous rice.