Tteokbokki, a spicy stir-fried rice cake dish, is a highly popular Korean street food and a delicious comfort food you can easily make at home. The spicy, slightly sweet, and chewy rice cakes are simply addictive!

What is tteokbokki?

Tteokbokki (or ddeokbokki), 떡볶이, is a beloved Korean dish with many variations and a rich history. Literally translated as “stir-fried rice cake”, tteokbokki is made with garaetteok, a cylinder-shaped white rice cake. This spicy rice cake dish is enormously popular as a street food and also often enjoyed at home.

Unlike gungjung tteokbokki, which has been around for hundreds of years, the red spicy tteokbokki has a relatively short history. It was developed in 1953, the year the Korean War ended, by a woman named Ma Bok-rim in the Sindang-dong neighborhood in Seoul. The chewy rice cake in a spicy gochujang sauce instantly became popular as an affordable comfort snack.

The dish has continued to evolve over time. Other ingredients such as fishcake, ramen, dumplings, egg, seafood and even cheese have been added, and it has become highly commercialized by small vendors and restaurants.

By the time I was growing up as a child, tteokbokki had become quite popular as a street food. The tteokbokki I grew up with was in its classic form without all the add-ins you see today. I have fond memories of eating it from street carts or market stalls as an after-school snack.

This tteokbokki recipe was originally posted in March 2012. I’ve updated it here with more information, new photos and minor changes to the recipe.

Tteokbokki rice cake

Garaetteok (가래떡), a cylinder-shaped white rice cake, is used in various ways in Korea. The thick type is  sliced into thin oval shapes for making tteokguk (rice cake soup). The thinner, shorter type is used for tteokbokki, hence the name tteokbokki tteok (떡볶이떡).

You can use either one for this recipe, but the thick type needs to be cut thinner and shorter for this recipe, or it will take much longer to cook.

Tteokbokki rice cakes are sold freshly made, refrigerated, or frozen at Korean markets. They come in various shapes and sizes. Needless to say, locally made fresh ones are the best ones to use, but good quality refrigerated ones are fine as well. Avoid buying frozen ones: they tend to be dry, easy to crack and not chewy.