Cheese Tteokbokki
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This Cheese Tteokbokki features chewy Korean rice cakes smothered in a sweet and spicy gochujang sauce and molten cheese. The addition of cheese on top will definitely level up your tteokbokki!
Tteokbokki is a popular street food that you can find everywhere in Korea. However, do you know what is better than the original tteokbokki? It’s Cheese Tteokbokki!
Driven by the young generation, cheese consumption has been rapidly rising in Korea over the last two decades. Cheeses are now commonly added to various traditional Korean dishes, such as gimbap, fried rice, pancakes, etc. More creative ideas, incorporating cheese into Korean food, are on the rise, and cheese is becoming a “hip” ingredient in Korean cuisine. Cheese Tteokbokki is also not an exception.
If you wonder if cheese and tteokbokki really go well together, they do! The melted cheese combined with the spicy rice cake tastes even more irresistible. And don’t worry if you can’t handle spicy food very well because this recipe might be a better option for you. The addition of cheese somehow dilutes the spiciness of the gochujang sauce. It is super delicious, umami-rich, and highly addictive!
About Tteokbokki
Tteokbokki (떡볶이) is a beloved Korean traditional food that has sticks of rounded rice cake as the main ingredient. “Tteok” is the Korean word for rice cake and “bokki” is the Korean word for something fried. Therefore, tteokbokki literally translated as “stir-fried rice cake”.
Components of Cheese Tteokbokki
Here are the components you need to make Cheese Tteokbokki at home.
- Korean Rice Cake. For making this recipe, you will need garatteok (가래떡), a long, cylindrical white rice cake made with non-glutinous rice flour. You can find them in different sizes in Korean grocery stores. Though all rice cakes taste the same, the size and shape dramatically affect the texture and flavor. The thick rice cake is usually cut into thin slices for making rice cake soup. The thin and short type is used for tteokbokki because the thin one quickly soaks in flavor. You can use either one for this recipe, but the thick one needs to be cut shorter as it will take much longer to cook.
- Gochujang Sauce. The red tteokbokki sauce is usually made with a combination of gochujang (Korean chili pepper paste), gochugaru (Korean red chili flakes), and other seasonings. If you don’t like it too spicy, simply use gochujang without any gochugaru. To make it really spicy, add more gochugaru to increase the heat level without altering the taste.
- Korean Soup Stock. This is the base of the tteokbokki sauce. Among others, dried kelp and dried anchovy stock is the most commonly used soup stock in Korean cooking. You can also use dashi broth or simply substitute it with any other stock if you can’t find this.
- Cheese. Mozzarella cheese is used for this recipe, but you can definitely use other melty cheese options.
Other Additions
If you feel like rice cakes are way too boring, you can try adding add-ins to your Cheese Tteokbokki. Today, people add all sorts of other ingredients, such as eomuk (fish cake), dumplings, eggs, sausages, and seafood.
More Korean Recipes
- Korean Sausage Bread
- Korean Popcorn Chicken
- Korean Rice Cakes With Honey
- Lemon Cube Pound Cakes
- Kimchi Cheese Fried Rice
Ingredients
- 17.5 oz (500 gr) Korean rice cakes, fresh or frozen
- 2 cups (480 ml) dashi/Korean soup stock
- 1 cup (225 gr) grated mozzarella cheese, or more
Sauce
- 3 tbsp gochujang/Korean chili paste
- 2 tsp gochugaru/Korean chili flakes
- 1 tbsp granulated sugar
- 1/2 tbsp corn syrup/granulated sugar
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tsp minced garlic
Garnish
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- Finely chopped scallions/green onions
- Toasted sesame seeds
Instructions
- If you are using frozen rice cakes, submerge them in warm water for 20-30 minutes or until they soften. If you are using fresh rice cakes, skip this step.
- In a small bowl, combine all the sauce ingredients until well combined.
- Heat a large frying pan or skillet over medium-high heat. Add the soup stock and rice cakes. Let the stock boil. Then, add the sauce and stir until well incorporated. Let the sauce boil until it thickens.
- After the sauce has thickened to your liking, move the rice cakes to the center of the pan (to cushion the cheese and prevent it from sinking into the sauce) and spread mozzarella cheese on top. Close the lid. Cook until the cheese is fully melted. Turn off the heat.
- Drizzle sesame oil and add scallions and sesame seeds if desired.
- Serve hot while the cheese is still melted.
So good. Finished it with grated cured salted egg yolk on top. Umami at the finest. Definitely easy to make if you have access to all the ingredients. Making again and again.
So delicious and easy to make-we left out the gochugaru and it was quite mild but still very flavorful. Thank you!
You’re welcomed 🙂
i picked up an instant pack of cheese tteokbokki at a local international mart recently, and was so taken with the flavor that i wanted to see if i could find a recipe that could recreate it. i was hesitant because i wasn’t sure how these flavors would meld together, but i forgot just how sweet and tasty gochujang tends to be.
i add smoked gouda to mine for an extra kick of the smoky flavor (definitely worth trying) but even without it, it’s phenomenal. it’s exactly what i wanted AND its way more spicy than the instant kind i bought!
and, a warning about the spice: if you’re not used to spice, you may want to use less of the paste or powder! it’s a phenomenal lingering spice that generally doesn’t burn like other chilis might, but if your spice tolerance is weak, definitely season to taste.
Thanks for the recipe!