Making Tteokbokki at Home

Nehal Tambe, Mumbai, Maharashtra

Tteokbokki is every K-pop/K-drama or Korean culture fan’s starter pack food. Tteokbokki (떡볶이) is a popular Korean snack that consists of rice cakes coated in a sweet-spicy sauce made of Korean chili paste and topped with vegetables. When ramen noodles (라면) are added to the dish, that combination becomes Rabokki (라볶이) which is Ramen + Tteokbokki. This is one of the first Korean dishes that fans get to know about, but as accessible as K-pop and K-dramas are to us, Korean food is still far from reach to most. The ingredients or the readymade dish is not widely available. Even if it is, it’s quite expensive. So, what do we do? We create our own version! Korean food with Korean ingredients at home! Let’s make it!

Preparing Rice Cakes

Take 2 cups of rice flour. Add ½ cup of all-purpose flour to it. All-purpose flour or “Maida” is used to provide binding. So, if the rice flour you’re using is glutinous or sticky, then you can skip all-purpose flour.

Add a pinch of salt if you do not like rice cakes too sweet. Slowly add water and start kneading the mixture. Make sure to not add water at once since the mixture might lose its consistency. The rice cake should have mouldable consistency like clay.

Next, start rolling lumps of the mix into cylinders and cut according to your desired size. Steam the cakes in a steamer for 5-10 minutes until the rice cakes are cooked and they become bouncy instead of clay-like. Do not overcook as the cakes can harden quickly.

Preparing the Sauce

As the cakes are steaming, start preparing the sauce. For this, heat 1 cup of water in a saucepan. Once the water starts to simmer, add 1-2 tbsp. of red chili powder or add red chili paste if you have it in the same amount. Add 2 tbsp. of sugar to the pan and stir. Add salt as per your taste.

The sauce should mainly taste sweet and spicy because that’s how Tteokbokki tastes like. For a little flavour, you can add vegetables of your choice and a little soy sauce if you like. Let the sauce thicken and then add the cooked rice cakes to the sauce. Let the sauce coat the rice cakes nicely and your Indian style Tteokbokki is ready!

Preparing Rabokki

Making Rabokki is also very simple. Just add a little more water to the sauce and add cooked ramen noodles (if you have Korean ones then great, if not add Maggi noodles) and that’s it and your Rabokki is ready!

Click to watch this quick video of making Tteokbokki at home:

This is how I enjoy my Indian style Korean food. Do try this recipe and let me know how it was in the comments below!