
If youโve ever watched a Korean drama, youโve probably seen someone eating this bright red, steamy street food. Thatโs Tteokbokki (๋ก๋ณถ์ด) โ soft, chewy rice cakes simmered in a sweet and spicy gochujang sauce.
ํ๊ตญ ๋๋ผ๋ง๋ฅผ ๋ณธ ์ ์ด ์๋ค๋ฉด, ๋ถ์์ ์๋
์ ํน ๋ด๊ธด ๋ก๋ณถ์ด๋ฅผ ๋จน๋ ์ฅ๋ฉด์ ํ ๋ฒ์ฏค ๋ดค์ ๊ฑฐ์์. ๋ก๋ณถ์ด๋ ์ซ๊นํ ๋ก์ ๋ฌ์ฝคํ๊ณ ๋งค์ด ๊ณ ์ถ์ฅ ์๋
์ ์กธ์ฌ ๋ง๋ ๋ํ์ ์ธ ํ๊ตญ ๊ธธ๊ฑฐ๋ฆฌ ์์์ด์์.
The best part? You donโt have to be in Korea to enjoy it. With just a few simple ingredients, you can recreate that authentic flavor right at home.
์ข์ ์ ์, ๊ผญ ํ๊ตญ์ ๊ฐ์ง ์์๋ ์ง์์ ๊ฐ๋จํ ์ฌ๋ฃ๋ก ๊ทธ ๋ง์ ๋ผ ์ ์๋ค๋ ๊ฑฐ์์.
๐ Ingredients ์ฌ๋ฃ

- Main ์ฃผ์ฌ๋ฃ
1ยฝ cups Korean rice cakes (about 200g) / ๋ก๋ณถ์ด ๋ก 1์ปต ๋ฐ (์ฝ 200g)
3โ4 fish cakes (or fish tofu sheets), sliced / ์ด๋ฌต 3~4์ฅ (๋๋ ํผ์ฌ๋๋ถ ์ํธ)
1 green onion, cut into 2-inch pieces / ๋ํ 1๋ (5cm ๊ธธ์ด๋ก ์๋ฆ)
2 cups water or anchovy broth / ๋ฌผ ๋๋ ๋ฉธ์น์ก์ 2์ปต
- Sauce ์์ค
2 tbsp gochujang (Korean red chili paste) / ๊ณ ์ถ์ฅ 2ํฐ์
1 tbsp gochugaru (Korean chili flakes) / ๊ณ ์ถง๊ฐ๋ฃจ 1ํฐ์
1 tbsp soy sauce / ๊ฐ์ฅ 1ํฐ์
1 tbsp sugar / ์คํ 1ํฐ์
1 tbsp corn syrup or honey / ๋ฌผ์ฟ ๋๋ ๊ฟ 1ํฐ์
1 tsp minced garlic / ๋ค์ง ๋ง๋ 1์์์
Optional toppings (์ ํ):
1 boiled egg or ยฝ cup mozzarella cheese / ์ถ์ ๋ฌ๊ฑ 1๊ฐ ๋๋ ๋ชจ์ง๋ ๋ผ์น์ฆ ยฝ์ปต
Sesame seeds for garnish / ๊นจ ์ฝ๊ฐ
๐ณ Instructions | ์กฐ๋ฆฌ๋ฒ

- Boil the broth.
In a medium pot, pour 2 cups of water (or anchovy broth) and bring it to a boil.
๋๋น์ ๋ฌผ์ด๋ ๋ฉธ์น์ก์๋ฅผ ๋ฃ๊ณ ๋์ ๋๋ค. - Add the sauce ingredients.
Stir in gochujang, gochugaru, soy sauce, sugar, corn syrup, and minced garlic. Mix well until smooth.
๊ณ ์ถ์ฅ, ๊ณ ์ถง๊ฐ๋ฃจ, ๊ฐ์ฅ, ์คํ, ๋ฌผ์ฟ, ๋ค์ง ๋ง๋์ ๋ฃ๊ณ ์ ํ์ด์ค๋๋ค. - Add rice cakes and fish cakes.
Once the sauce starts bubbling, add rice cakes and fish cakes. Stir often so they donโt stick.
์๋ ์ด ๋๊ธฐ ์์ํ๋ฉด ๋ก๊ณผ ์ด๋ฌต์ ๋ฃ๊ณ ์ ์ด์ค๋๋ค. - Simmer until thick.
Cook for about 10 minutes until the sauce thickens and the rice cakes become soft and chewy.
์ฝ 10๋ถ๊ฐ ๋์ฌ ์๋ ์ด ๊ฑธ์ญํด์ง๊ณ ๋ก์ด ๋ถ๋๋ฌ์์ง ๋๊น์ง ์กธ์ ๋๋ค. - Finish with toppings.
Add boiled egg or cheese, and sprinkle sesame seeds before serving.
์ถ์ ๋ฌ๊ฑ์ด๋ ์น์ฆ๋ฅผ ๋ฃ๊ณ , ๋ง์ง๋ง์ ๊นจ๋ฅผ ๋ฟ๋ ค ๋ง๋ฌด๋ฆฌํฉ๋๋ค.
๐ง Storage / ๋ณด๊ด๋ฒ

If you happen to have some leftover tteokbokki (which honestly doesnโt happen often ๐), hereโs the best way to keep it fresh!
ํน์ ๋จ์๋ค๋ฉด (์ฌ์ค ๊ฑฐ์ ๊ทธ๋ฐ ์ผ์ ์์ง๋ง์ ๐), ์ด๋ ๊ฒ ๋ณด๊ดํ๋ฉด ์ข์์.
Let it cool completely, then store it in an airtight container in the fridge.
์์ ํ ์ํ ๋ค ๋ฐํ์ฉ๊ธฐ์ ๋ด์ ๋์ฅ๊ณ ์ ๋ฃ์ด์ฃผ์ธ์.
When youโre ready to eat again, add a spoon or two of water and warm it slowly over low heat โ itโll come back soft and chewy like new.
๋จน๊ธฐ ์ ์ ๋ฌผ ํ๋ ์คํผ ๋ฃ๊ณ ์ฝ๋ถ๋ก ์ฒ์ฒํ ๋ฐ์ฐ๋ฉด ์ฒ์์ฒ๋ผ ๋ง๋ํด์ ธ์.
If youโre in a hurry, pop it in the microwave for about a minute, give it a quick stir, then heat again until hot.
๋ฐ์ ๋ ์ ์๋ ์ธ์ง์ 1๋ถ ์ ๋ ๋๋ฆฌ๊ณ ํ ๋ฒ ์ ์ด ๋ค์ ๋ฐ์๋ ๊ด์ฐฎ์์.
I donโt recommend freezing it though โ rice cakes turn hard and lose their chewy texture.
๋ค๋ง ๋๋์ ๋น์ถ์ฒ์ด์์. ๋ก์ด ๋ฑ๋ฑํด์ ธ์ ์ซ๋ํ ์๊ฐ์ด ์ฌ๋ผ์ง๊ฑฐ๋ ์.
If you want, you can freeze just the sauce separately for next time!
ํ์ํ๋ค๋ฉด ์๋
์์ค๋ง ๋ฐ๋ก ๋๋ํด๋๋ฉด ๋ค์์๋ ํธํ๊ฒ ์ธ ์ ์์ด์.
Oh, and for cheese tteokbokki โ always add fresh cheese when reheating.
๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ์น์ฆ ๋ก๋ณถ์ด๋ ๋ฐ์ธ ๋ ์ ์น์ฆ๋ฅผ ์ด์ง ๋ ์ฌ๋ฆฌ๋ฉด ํจ์ฌ ๋ง์์ด์. ๐ง
๐ก Tips ํ
- If rice cakes are frozen, soak in warm water for 10 minutes before cooking.
๋๋ ๋ก์ ๋ฏธ๋ฆฌ ๋ฐ๋ปํ ๋ฌผ์ 10๋ถ ์ ๋ ๋ด๊ฐ์ฃผ์ธ์.
- Add a few drops of sesame oil for extra flavor.
์ฐธ๊ธฐ๋ฆ์ ์ด์ง ๋ฃ์ผ๋ฉด ํ๋ฏธ๊ฐ ๋ ์ข์์ ธ์.
- Goes perfectly with fried dumplings or kimbap!
ํ๊น์ด๋ ๊น๋ฐฅ๊ณผ ํจ๊ป ๋จน์ผ๋ฉด ๊ถํฉ์ด ์ข์์.

If youโre planning to try making tteokbokki at home, it helps to stop by a Korean grocery store first.
Rice cakes, gochujang, and fish cakes are the key โ and once you have them, you can use them for many other Korean dishes too.
They keep well in the fridge and come in handy whenever you want a quick, warm meal with Korean flavor.
In Korea, tteokbokki is often enjoyed together with soondae (Korean blood sausage) and fried snacks (twigim).