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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
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