Spicy Rice Cake (떡뽂이Ddukbokki/Tteokbokki)

Ddukbokki (Korean Spicy Rice Cake)

This recipe is the simplest, easiest Korean spicy rice cake (Ddukbokki/Tteokbokki) ever and I used to make this for myself when I was in high school as my late night snack. I haven’t made this in a while but I realized this may be the perfect recipe for college students or young people out there who really don’t have the time or have all the ingredients to make a full version (will be posting that next).

Ingredients

• 1 C  rice cake(dduk/tteok) for ddukbokki/tteokbokki(떡뽂이)
• 2 tsp korean spicy bean paste (고추장 gochujang)
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• 3/4 C water
• sesame seeds (optional)

1. 1 C rice cake is about 5-6 oz. The quality of the dduk varies quite a bit and freshly made (never frozen) is the best. Here’s a pic of a freshly made, never frozen, moist dduk and then dry, old, cracked dduk below. Rice cake can also develop cracks if it has been frozen and defrosted a few times.

fresh dduk

dry, old, cracked dduk

If your dduk is frozen, let it defrost in cold water for a few minutes and drain.

2. Add water, gochujang and sugar to a pan and bring to a boil on medium high heat. I forgot to stir before taking this picture but yes.. you should stir it at some point before it boils. You can use less gochujang if you like things less spicy.

water, gochujang and sugar for ddukbokki

3. Add the dduk to the gochujang water and lower the heat and simmer for 8-10 minutes.

dduk in gochujang water for ddukbokki

And it should look something like this:

ddukbokki is done

There you go! That’s it!! This ddukbokki will probably taste a bit different from the ones you may have tasted before but you should definitely give this a try. It has a very clean, spicy and sweet taste that’s quite addicting.

Sprinkle some sesame seeds on top if you’d like. Fish cake (oden) soup or yache twigim are perfect compliments to this if you want to make this into a complete dinner good enough to have friends over.

Oh and you may wonder..these dduk look like they have cracks in them! Yes, I bought these on purpose to show on this post.  But I couldn’t just throw them away so I used them in this recipe…