Tteokbokki (Spicy Stir-fried Rice Cakes)

Tteokbokki means "stir-fried rice cake," and its original form was nothing like the red street snack. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture defines it as rod-shaped white rice cake (garaetteok) cut into short lengths and quartered, then stir-fried with seasoned beef, dried zucchini strips, blanched mung bean sprouts, shiitake, onion and carrot — a balanced, nourishing dish. The Korean Food Promotion Institute calls this soy-sauce version gungjung tteokbokki, "royal court tteokbokki," finished with pine nuts and egg-strip garnish. It says a similar dish of white rice cake, beef sirloin, sesame oil, soy sauce and green onion appears in the late-19th-century cookbook Siui jeonseo under names such as tteokjjim or tteok-japchae, and that the name tteokbokki is first found in a 1942 edition of Bang Sin-yeong's Joseon yori jebeop. See royal court cuisine and tteok.

The gochujang version is a product of postwar Seoul. Both the institute and the Korea JoongAng Daily credit Ma Bok-rim, who began selling spicy rice cakes from a street stall in Sindang-dong in 1953, just after the Korean War, with a sauce combining gochujang and chunjang, the black bean paste used in jajangmyeon. The institute relates her own story that the idea came when a piece of rice cake fell into a bowl of jajangmyeon at a Chinese restaurant. As her business grew, other shops opened nearby, and by the 1980s an alley of tteokbokki restaurants had formed, serving it cooked at the table with ramen, dumplings, boiled eggs and other add-ins.

The institute also cautions against treating 1953 as the moment the red version took over. Newspaper recipes around 1960 still describe soy-seasoned tteokbokki; the gochujang style seems to have spread widely only from the late 1960s or the 1970s, helped by radio coverage of Sindang-dong shops — which hired DJs to play music — and by cheap rice cakes made from wheat flour during the government's flour-promotion years. Rice-based cakes returned in the 1990s. Today the soy-sauce dish is called gungjung or ganjang tteokbokki to distinguish it, while plain "tteokbokki" means the red one. See Korean street food.

• Energy from rice: rice cakes are a dense, low-fat source of carbohydrate.
• Add-ins add nutrition: cabbage, green onions, eggs and fish cake contribute some protein, fiber and variety to what is otherwise a starchy snack.
• Court style is lighter on heat: soy-sauce gungjung tteokbokki, with beef and several vegetables, is a more balanced dish; see capsaicin and spicy food for more on chili heat.

• Gungjung (court) tteokbokki: rice cakes stir-fried with beef, shiitake, vegetables and soy sauce, garnished with pine nuts and egg strips; mild and savory.
• Sindang-dong jeukseok tteokbokki (Seoul): cooked at the table in a shallow pan with fish cake, ramen or chewy jjolmyeon noodles, dumplings and boiled eggs.
• Street-cart tteokbokki: thick, sweet-spicy gochujang sauce simmered in a large griddle pan, often sold with gimbap, fried snacks and sundae.
• Modern variations: wheat-flour (mil-tteok) or rice cakes, and sauces made with curry, cream, black bean paste or extra-hot chili, plus seafood or short-rib versions.