Last night I made the Gireum Tteobokki (Stir-Fried Korean Rice Cakes and Korean Chile Paste) recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. I was excited to make this one, because it sounds interesting and delicious, but also a little intimidated because I’ve never had anything close to this dish.

I had to find both rice cakes and gochugaru. My local Asian market has gochugaru, and they have disk-shaped rice cakes in their freezer section, but I wanted to find the rod-shaped ones since they’re supposedly more traditional. I found those at the Buford Highway Farmer’s Market, which is a bit of a trek for me.

The recipe is straightforward. Everything is over medium heat so it moves slower than the typical stir-fry. Scallions and garlic are stir-fried in a bit of oil, then a sauce of gochujang, gochugaru, sugar, soy sauce, and sesame oil are stirred in. Finally the rice cakes are added and simmer for ten minutes until the sauce has reduced and things start to brown and the rice cakes are soft. Kenji points out that it’s crucial to take the full 10 so that the rice cakes will be soft enough.

Immediately after adding the rice cakes, I knew I did not have enough moisture to make the full ten minutes. I added about a quarter cup of water and that seemed to do the trick.

The rice cakes were chewy and the dish had a good spiciness. Megan thought they were just ok, something about the flavors were too strong for her, but it wasn’t the spice level. She also wasn’t a big fan of the chewiness. I thought they were good, but I think they’d fit better as a party food or a snack. We had them as a side along with some salad and roasted broccoli. We kind of felt like we needed rice to go with them, but they are rice, so that also felt wrong.

I’d make them again as part of a party spread with toothpicks for easy eating or as a snack for myself.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.