- [Andrew] This episode is sponsored by Squarespace.
I used Squarespace to build both BasicsWithBabish
and BingingWithBabish.com.
On the sites, you'll find recipes, equipment lists,
other news, and updates. All beautifully designed
if I do say so myself.
Get 10% off your first Squarespace order
by visiting squarespace.com/Babish.
(upbeat theme music)
- All right, so the easiest way to make Tteokbokki
or Spicy Korean Rice Cakes,
is to buy store-bought rice cakes.
These are usually frozen, and you should soak them
in water for about 10 minutes before use.
I can't speak Korean, but I'm guessing
this little packet says "do not eat".
Good and let those hang out and 10 minutes later
they're going to look exactly the same.
In fact, I'm not really sure what this step is for
but every recipe I could find said to do it.
Once we've got those drained and patted dry,
we're ready to start talking sauce.
For the most basic version of which we're going to need
at least three things: some gochugaru,
or Korean chili flakes, and some gochujang,
a fermented chili paste.
And some dashi, an anchovy-based broth
that lends a whole lot of umami
and a light seafood flavor.
I'm adding one tablespoon
of dashi flakes to three cups of water.
If you can't find dashi flakes, you could just
use some seafood or chicken flavored bullion.
But for one pound of rice cakes,
we want three cups of broth,
A heaping quarter cup of gochujang,
and anywhere from a half teaspoon,
to two full teaspoons of gochugaru,
depending on how spicy you like things to get.
Go ahead and tiny whisk those together over medium
high heat until they are homogenous.
And once the mixture comes to a bare simmer
we're going to add our rice cakes.
Bring it back up to a simmer,
crank the heat back down to medium-low and maintain
a simmer for anywhere from 7 to 10 minutes
until the rice cakes are cooked and the sauce is thick.
One of my very favorite things about Tteokbokki
is that the rice cakes are super chewy
so don't expect them to turn out too tender
or mushy or anything.
You can serve them as is, or top them
simply with scallions.
And there you have it, a baseline bowl of Tteokboki.
The rice cakes are chewy and bouncy.
The sauce is spicy and maybe a little sweet
ff you add an optional tablespoon of sugar.
And everything's just loaded with umami
from the dashi broth.
But what if you want to make these super legit?
First, we have to tackle the question of rice cakes.
If you can't find them at the store
and you want to make them yourself
they're traditionally made with glutinous rice flour
but this can be very hard to find.
Luckily, plain old rice flour,
while not being traditional, works just fine.
In a large heat-proof bowl,
we are combining 345 grams of rice flour
with a half teaspoon of kosher salt.
Then we are adding anywhere from 200 to 300 grams
of boiling water.
Different rice flours absorb water differently,
so it's going to vary depending on what you've got.
But in this recipe I adapted from
from internet legend, Maangchi,
you want to add just enough water to make a dough
that has no dry patches when you massage it together.
Once you've got a cohesive, tacky ball of dough
we're going to partially cover our bowl with
microwave-safe cling film leaving about
a one-inch vent on the side so things don't
get too hot as we microwave it on
high power for two minutes.
After which time, we're going to take it out,
remove the plastic wrap.
Be careful 'cause it's going to be pretty hot.
So we're going to use a rubber spatula to sort of
mix up and fold over the dough a couple times.
Nothing fancy, we just want to make sure
that everything is getting heated evenly
as we microwave it a second time, two more minutes
yet again on high power.
This time the dough is going to be very hot
but we must use this opportunity while it's still
malleable to both develop its starch content,
and shape it into our intended shapes.
So we're treating our work surface
with a little bit of sesame oil,
turning out our dough, and commencing to pounding.
That is using a heavy bottom saucepan
or meat mallet to pound out the dough
to about a half inch thickness.
Then we're going to fold it over upon itself,
like a pamphlet, so sort of into thirds,
and repeat the process probably for about 10 to 15 times.
This is going to build up the starch content
and give us that nice dense chewy texture we so desire.
After half a dozen or so turns, you're going
to find that the dough's a lot more agreeable
and you'll be able to roll it out rather than pound it.
Keep going until the dough is completely smooth
and then it's time to roll out and cut.
First, I'm gonna roll the dough out one more time
into a sort of rectangle which
I'm going to roll up into a log,
kind of like, a cinnamon roll made of
rice flour and water.
Then I'm going to divide this into two portions,
each of which I'm going to roll out into a long thin log.
At some point it might get a little bit too long,
you might want to divide it in half yet again.
But ultimately we're looking for a log
about a quarter inch wide which we're then going
to be able to subdivide into individual rice cakes.
These should be somewhere between one to two inches long
and can be optionally cut on the diagonals
so as to make sort of rice cake parallelograms.
Definitely had to Google image search what
a parallelogram was because
it's been a long time since high school trig.
And there you have it, homemade rice cakes.
Rinse and repeat with the remaining dough
and then to prevent these guys from sticking,
we're going to roll 'em around
with a little bit of Sesame oil.
These can then be frozen or fridged until ready to use.
Then if you want to be a really super bad-ass
about this process, you can make your own dashi.
First, we're going to start with eight to ten
large dried anchovies whose heads we must remove
and guts we must evacuate.
Basically right behind the head,
there's this big old clump of black stuff and
you just want to kind of squeeze and shimmy that out.
This is all kind of a gross, oily and smelly process
so just grin and bear it because
your taste buds will thank you for it later.
We're placing our beheaded and degutted anchovies
in a large high-walled sautee pan
with a quarter ounce of dried shrimp.
And then we need about an ounce of dried kelp,
or Kombu, broken up into pieces.
These need to be removed before everything else
so make sure you leave them in large enough pieces
that you can fish out.
Then I've got one whole onion,
root removed, and quartered.
A bunch of scallions cut into
two or three inch "batons" and a couple
large cloves of garlic cut in half.
Make sure to take any and all appropriate
dramatic license with slicing and
inserting your garlic.
And that's really all there is to making dashi broth.
Oh wait, except for one thing, maybe the most,
I don't know, important substance on earth: water.
Sorry, if you can't tell I'm doing this voiceover
late at night and I'm getting a little punchy.
We're bringing this guy up to the simmer
and keeping him there for 10 solid minutes,
before removing the sheets of Kombu.
Once removed, we're letting everything
simmer for an additional 20 minutes
or until your neighbors complain to the cops that
you're running an illegal fishery in your apartment.
Go ahead and remove that from the heat,
strain out the solids and same deal as last time,
three cups of the stuff in a large wide saute pan
along with a quarter cup of gochujang,
and depending on your spice preference,
your preferred amount of gochugaru.
I'm also adding about a tablespoon of Korean soy sauce
and a tablespoon of light corn syrup.
But like I mentioned before, you can just use sugar.
I'm also crushing in one or two large cloves of garlic.
T-whisking until homogeneous, bring it to a simmer
and dumping in one pound of our homemade rice cakes.
Then while these simmer we're going to add an optional,
but widely used ingredient, an assortment of fish cakes
which you can find frozen in the same place as
you'd find the rice cakes.
Then it's the same deal as before,
simmer for anywhere from 7 to 15 minutes,
until the sauce is reduced and thick.
Then we're finishing things off with a little drizzle
of toasted sesame oil for both flavor and the gloss factor
and plating up tall and proud as before.
But this time with a sprinkle of toasted black
and white sesame seeds.
This is going to bring a lot of flavor
and a little bit of crunch.
Our obligatory sliced scallions.
And there you have it, some totally
from scratch and much more legit Tteokbokki which
has got to be one of my favorite dishes of all time.
Just like before we got chewy rice cakes
and spicy savory sauce, but the flavors are deeper.
And so to are my emotions for them.
Last up we're going to cover stir-fried Tteokbokki.
This time, we're assembling the sauce off-heat.
Two or three tablespoons gochujang,
one teaspoon of gochugaru, one clove of crushed garlic
a tablespoon of Korean soy sauce.
You can just use regular soy sauce,
If you can't find Korean soy sauce.
A quarter cup of dashi,
a tablespoon of light corn syrup,
and a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil.
Tiny whisk this to combine, and then
we're headed over to the stove top
where we're starting by par-cooking
our rice cakes in boiling water rather than the sauce.
We're letting those boil for about six minutes.
Preheating two or so tablespoons
of vegetable oil in a large Wok.
Thoroughly draining the rice cakes and dumping 'em in.
Frying for about three to five minutes on each side,
until you get a nice deep golden crust,
and a profoundly crunchy exterior.
This could take a surprisingly long amount of time
but these guys don't burn easy, so,
just take your time, make sure that you've got
a nice crust and once you do, lower the heat
and add a few tablespoons of our pre-prepared sauce.
There is sugar in the sauce and
we don't want it to burn so make sure
that you don't heat it too much.
We just want it to caramelize a little bit
and cook into our rice cakes.
As usual tossing is optional, but preferred.
Then you can go ahead and kill the heat,
add some optional sesame seeds.
And once everything's thick and sticky,
plate up with an extra drizzle of sauce
and an extra sprinkling of sesame seeds and scallions.
And there you have it chewy, crispy, saucy
pan-fried Tteokbokki.
Dear Diary, Today, one of my very
favorite things got even better.
Thanks again to Squarespace
for sponsoring today's episode.
They've been a great partner
in supporting the Babish Culinary Universe
and bringing my websites to life.
From websites to online stores, to domains and analytics.
Squarespace is the all-in-one platform
for you to build your online presence.
They also have SEO tools so that your site is getting found
in search by more people, more often.
If you want to try it for yourself,
you can start your free trial today
by visiting Squarespace.com/Babish to get
10% off your first purchase.
(music fades out)