Main · Simmered

Tteokbokki (Spicy Rice Cakes)

Photo via Pexels/Unsplash — free for commercial use

These chewy rice cakes started out as a royal court dish, not street food.

Cylindrical rice cakes simmered in a sweet-spicy gochujang sauce, often with fish cakes and boiled egg, sold from red tented street carts called pojangmacha.

Why it's made this way: The dish moved from palace kitchens to street vendors in the 1950s as rice cakes became more affordable and gochujang paste made it fast to prepare in bulk.