Name: Tteokbokki - Korean Spicy Rice Cake
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 15 min
Ingredients: 1 C rice cake ((dduk/tteok) for tteokbokki(떡볶이)); 2 tsp korean spicy bean paste ((고추장 gochujang)); 2 tsp sugar; 1 tsp soy sauce; 3/4 C water; sesame seeds ((optional))

Simple Tteokbokki (Korean spicy rice cake) plated with sesame seeds sprinkled on top — Simple Tteokbokki (Korean spicy rice cake)

This Tteokbokki recipe is the simplest and easiest Korean spicy rice cake recipe 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 type of Tteokbokki 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. Recipe for the more common spicy rice cake with vegetables and fish cake is also available so try that sometime!

Spicy Rice Cake with Vegetables and Fish Cake RECIPE

Tteokbokki - Korean spicy rice cake with vegetables, cooking in pan — Tteokbokki – Korean spicy rice cake with vegetables, cooking in pan

Tteokbokki – Spicy Rice Cake Recipe

Servings: 1 Cooking Time: 15 min Difficulty: EASY

Ingredients are adjustable and listed below in my Recipe Card –

Step by Step Directions for How to Make Tteokbokki

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

fresh tteok/dduk rice cakes closeup — fresh rice cake(떡 tteok/dduk)

dry, old, cracked dduk/tteok — dry, old, cracked rice cake (tteok/dduk)

If your tteok/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 starting to boil in pan for tteokbokki — water, gochujang and sugar for tteokbokki

3. Add the tteokbokki tteok to the gochujang water. Add 1 tsp soy sauce and lower the heat and simmer for 8-10 minutes.

Tteokbokki boiling in pan before liquid is reduced — Tteokbokki with 5 ingredients

And it should look something like this:

cooked tteokbokki in pan — Tteokbokki (Korean spicy rice cake) is done!

There you go! That’s it!! This tteokbokki 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 simple, 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 tteok 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…

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