Tteokbokki / Stir-fried Korean Rice Cakes + Preparation Directions

Tteokbokki / Stir-fried Korean Rice Cakes + Preparation Directions
Originally uploaded by Food Trails.

When ER, Rika and I shopped at this Korean shop at North Canal Road, the lady shopkeeper was pretty attentive. When I spoke to her in English, she said,” Jiang hua yu, hao ma?” Why not? She is good in Mandarin and gave me clear instructions when asked.

Well, rice cakes caught my eyes when we were making payment. So, we decided to buy it when we found out there was pre-mixed sauce at the store. A kilo of cylindrical rice cakes came in two solid slabs. Separating each rice stick from the clumps took some effort, ER did the task. And two packets of hot sauce weighing 150g each were needed to cook a kilo.

Cooking was easy. First, blenched the rice noodles with boiling water, drained and tossed them with cooking oil, set aside till needed. Take care though, this rice noodles cooked very fast, within minutes. Next, I had Stir-fried some leaves of long cabbage, carrots and Chinese mushrooms to go with it. In the same pan, without oil, I had warmed up the hot sauce with 1 cup of hot water added in [add in more water if you like the sauce to be runny], at this point, the noodles were returned to the pan and turned to coated well with sauce. Cooked vegetables were added in. Lastly, I had added in one teaspoon of sesame oil for extra flavour. If you have toasted sesame seeds, sprinkle some on the rice noodles and serve.