Brief introduction of the main ingredients
떡 Tteok
Tteok is a name of a category of Korean rice cakes made from various grains. 찹쌀 Glutinous rice (not the ones you make kimbap or sushi with) that are steamed are most common and typically featured in cooking. In some cases, tteok is pounded from cooked grains.
The tteok we used is Tteok-bokki tteok. 볶이 Bokki: means stired-fried, so Tteok-bokki is the name of the dish, tteok-bokki tteok is the ingredient.
떡볶이떡 Tteokbokki Tteok
Unlike Tteok-guk Tteok, it has a ‘thin’ cylindrical shape about size of a pinky finger. The packet comes vacuum sealed and will need to be refrigerated. If you are not using all tteok, you can freeze it to store extra.
표고버섯 Dried Shiitake mushroom
The umami flavor of the sauce comes from this.
The dried mushrooms are soaked at least 6-8 hours to fully soften and to create infused water that is liquid gold of flavor. My go to formula is to soak for about 24 hours in large amount of water. This will rehydrated the mushroom for more softer texture and provide heavier flavor to the water.
I picked this brand at Heart (tho no listing on their website) because the mushrooms looked to be decent size and was fairly priced. It’s really up to your need and preference tho. For example, some are pre-sliced dried mushrooms eliminating post-soak prepping before adding the mushroom to the pot.
고추장 Gochu-jjang
Jjang means a sauce paste. Gochu means pepper. Typically made with Korean chill pepper or Korean Long, it has nice amount of heat and slightly sweet flavor. There are many variety of brand and level of heat but one pictured is what I used.
List of ingredients used in LC batch
Tteokbokki- Tteok
- Soaked in water for about 5 minutes. Typically first step in the cooking/prepping process
Dried Shiitake mushrooms
- Removed from water, stem removed and sliced. Both dried and fresh, stem is always removed and discarded.
Mushroom water
Gochujjang
Onion -yellow medium
- Sliced or lyonnaised
Carrots
- Medium julienne
Napa cabbage
- Medium julienne
Big enoki mushrooms
- Cut into similar lengths of tteok
Zucchini
- Medium julienne
Scallions
- Sliced or round cuts
Salt – to taste (I didn’t use any in our batch at LC)
Measurements
I don’t typically measure ingredients in cooking but it’s all about managing ratio of these list of things. It’s always flexible and has room to add more of favorite or less of other. A cup of cooked tteok is good as a single portion so feel free to experiment with your ingredients. Snow peas or sugar snap peas are good additions. Zucchini and seem to melt away into the sauce so maybe this could be a secret way to add them to the meal.
Cooking
In a saute pan, stir fry onions, and mushrooms in neutral oil until onion is slightly translucent in medium heat.
Add in carrots and tteok with enough of mushroom water to cover the tteok.
Add in gochujjang to dissolve in the water. As tteok cooks, the water will thicken into a glossy sauce. Add salt here if needed.
In 5-7minutes, or about half way through, add Napa cabbage and zucchini and stir to incorporate.
Cook for about 3-5 more minutes. This will down the sauce, When tteok is fully cooked, stir in the scallions and serve.
If this method is too abstract, please check out Maagchi’s video. She does great job explaining step by step with actual measurements of things you need. Tho her recipe is not Vegan (uses fish cake), you can at least learn the cooking method/template.
And yes, it’s the same Maagchi that’s mentioned in Crying in Hmart.
Maagchi’s traditional recipe