Korean Street Food Recipe | Tteokbokki 떡볶이

One of my goals in learning the Korean language, in addition to getting to a “conversational level”, is to one day visit Korea and navigate my way around on my own.

In order to kind of psych myself up about my trip (and to remind myself why I’m working on the language), I often scroll through a bit of eye candy on Pinterest – photos of Seoul and Korean street foods from other travel bloggers.

To be totally honest, Korean street foods are one of the things that I most look forward to experiencing on my upcoming trip. But then I realized, I don’t have to wait until I’m in Korea to try some of these things out… There’s a Korean market not too far from where I live and I was sure they had plenty of what I needed to try my hand at making some of these dishes on my own.

So I made the trip out, bought a few snacks and ingredients and spoiled myself (and M, I saved a little bit for him too) with a few Korean treats.

If you saw my Korean snack video, you’ll know just what I’m talking about.

I ended up making two Korean street foods – hotteok and tteokbokki. The first I used a mix, so it’s obviously not a recipe of my own, but the latter I made using many of the ingredients I already had (from some of the other Korean dishes I’ve made), so it’s definitely one I can share with you.

Tteokbokki is a spicy rice cake dish that is made from fish cakes, gochujang (Korean chili paste), fish cake, soy sauce, sesame oil, and a touch of sugar and garlic. It’s definitely a spicy dish, so if you are sensitive to spice, you can try toning it down by including less paste or even neutralizing the spice with a bit of mozzarella cheese melted over the top.