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 – 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.
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.
3. Add the tteokbokki tteok to the gochujang water. Add 1 tsp soy sauce and lower the heat and simmer for 8-10 minutes.
And it should look something like this:
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…
Tteokbokki - Korean Spicy Rice Cake
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)
Instructions
- 1 C rice cake is about 5-6 oz. The quality of the tteok/dduk varies quite a bit and freshly made (never frozen) is the best but if you can't buy fresh ones, defrost frozen rice cakes.
- Add water, gochujang and sugar to a pan and bring to a boil on medium high heat.
- Add the tteokbokki tteok to the gochujang water and lower the heat and simmer for 8-10 minutes.
Tips & Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Enjoy!
Hi Kimchimari
If there is no possibility to get fresh made rice cakes, then what do you prefer? Dry or frozen rice cakes? Best regards Sara
If you mean Dry – as in, either refrigerated or vacuum packed, yes, dry is usually better because frozen ones (if they have been frozen/thawed and re-frozen) can be problematic. Hope that helps. Thank you!
i dont think the total is 81 cals because on my rice cake package from the supermarket, 12 peices of rice cake or about 100g of rice cakes = about 225 calories for the rice cakes alone. So i think the total would be about 240-250 plus sugar
is this really 81 cal for the whole thing? i loved it!
I think so – the calorie calculations may not be totally exact as I’m not sure how Korean foods are accurately calculated. But certainly, there’s no fat or oil in it so… glad you loved it!!
Can you use gochugaru in place of gochujang? I don’t have gochujang
Gochugaru can’t really replace gochujang as gochujang is a fermented paste. If you don’t have gochujang, maybe you should make this instead – https://kimchimari.com/tteokbokki-recipe-chili-oil-gireum/ – this version doesn’t use gochujang. Hope that works. Cheers!
I don’t usually leave comments on recipes, but I just couldn’t resist on this one! I haven’t cooked rice cakes before, but I have tried them a few times. This recipe was so easy and delicious! I can’t wait to make it again.
Yay!! I’m so happy to hear that – glad you liked them. Thank you soo much for letting me know and for the 5 stars!