158 recipes. Page 2 of 7
Popular Korean street food recipes
Air-fried chicken tenders go onto the sesame-salt rice straight from the basket, while the coating is still hot and firm, and get rolled at once. Waiting lets moisture from the rice and lettuce soften the crust before the roll is even closed.
Corn sauteed in butter is folded with mayonnaise, covered with mozzarella and heated in the cup it is served in. A microwave or an oven both do the job. Each spoonful pulls up a string of cheese, and the corn underneath is sweet and salty.
Wavy ramen strands leave ridges and pockets across the surface of this pancake, and those uneven spots fry up especially crunchy. The noodles are boiled for only two minutes so they stay firm; the heat of the pan finishes them and they keep their spring instead of collapsing into the batter.
Thick udon wears a coat of red gochujang dressing in this cold cup, with raw shredded cabbage and carrot adding crunch against the soft noodles. Oligosaccharide syrup gives the sauce enough body to cling to slippery udon, and vinegar keeps the heat bright rather than heavy. The frozen udon is blanched for just 1 minute so the thick strands keep their spring. Cabbage and carrot are pressed dry with a paper towel first to keep their water from thinning the dressing. Portioned into cups, it is easy to carry and eat by hand, though it tastes best served cold right away before the noodles swell.
Small rolls of plain seasoned rice with no filling sit beside spicy squid and seasoned radish, and you take a bite of one, then the other. It is the Tongyeong way: salt and sesame oil for the rice, and all the heat in the side dishes.
Semi-dried squid browns fast in a buttered pan and stays chewy. Shallow scores on the inside of the body give the soy and syrup glaze somewhere to sink in. Once done, the pieces go onto skewers or into paper cups.
The batter is nothing but soaked, ground mung beans, no wheat flour, which makes it dense and nutty, and each round goes into the pan a full 1.5 cm thick, so one is a meal. Blanched mung bean sprouts give the thick middle some crunch.
Small cubes of potato and zucchini sit in a thick black bean sauce that clings heavily to the noodles, the way it does at Korean bunsik snack shops. Some of the potato breaks down as it simmers and thickens the sauce on its own before the starch slurry is added. Frying the chunjang in oil first takes the edge off its raw bitterness, leaving the slow-cooked onion's sweetness to round it out.
Slice a roll and a wide band of breaded pork fills the middle, with shredded cabbage and tonkatsu sauce tucked beside it. Let the cutlet cool completely on a rack before rolling, or the breading goes soft.
Most of the filling is a flat omelet of shredded cabbage and carrot, cooked to the size of the bread. The sugar is not stirred into a sauce; it is scattered straight onto the toasted bread, followed by mayonnaise, the omelet, ham and ketchup.
No flour or egg goes into this batter; the starch in the ground mung beans is what holds each pancake together. Soaking the beans yourself takes more than 6 hours, and that time has to be planned in. Pressed over medium heat, the outside forms a golden crust around the pork and kimchi.
Thick, springy jjolmyeon noodles get tossed in a sweet, sour and spicy dressing of gochujang, vinegar and sugar. Cabbage and cucumber soaked in cold water stay crisp against the heat, while a halved boiled egg rounds things out. The noodle is said to have started in the 1970s as a production mistake at a noodle factory in Incheon.
The spinach is squeezed hard before it is seasoned, the carrot is sauteed to drive off water, and the rice is left to cool a little before it is spread on the seaweed. All three steps are there to keep the gim from going soggy. The finished roll and the knife both get a thin coat of sesame oil before slicing.
Glutinous rice dough sinks to the bottom of the oil at first and only puffs up and floats a little later. Until it rises, leave it alone. The shell is thin and crisp, the inside stretches like rice cake, and the sugar goes on once they have cooled to warm.
Fish cake simmered right in the broth, a heap of dried seaweed flakes, and sliced scallions: this bowl recreates the udon sold at Korean street stalls, known as pojangmacha. The fish cake stays in for only about 5 minutes, since much longer leaves it soft and limp. The broth is a quick homemade dashi of kombu and bonito flakes, seasoned with both soup soy sauce and regular soy sauce for a balance of savoriness and color, plus a little sugar to round off the soy. The bonito flakes steep off the heat without stirring, which keeps the dashi clear. The soup stays clear because frozen udon is only blanched in a separate pot and placed in the bowl first, with the broth brought back to a rolling boil and poured over.
Rice goes into a single cup and gochujang-glazed pork shoulder is piled over it, the way Korean snack bars (bunsik) serve it. The trick is spreading the rice out first to let the steam escape: spooned into the cup straight from the pot, it turns soggy in its own vapor.
This yeasted dough uses more glutinous rice flour than bread flour, which gives the inside a stretchy, chewy pull that plain wheat donuts lack. Rolled in cinnamon sugar straight from the fryer, the donuts melt a little of the sugar with their own heat, leaving a thin crust that follows every turn of the twist.
Rabokki adds instant ramen noodles to tteokbokki, the chewy rice cakes simmered in a sweet, spicy gochujang sauce. The rice cakes simmer alone for 5 minutes to soften, and the ramen and fish cakes follow for just 3, because the noodles soak up sauce fast; by the time they are cooked, the sauce has reduced to a thick glaze. Plenty of water at the start allows for that absorption. Half a packet of the ramen seasoning deepens the savoriness, and a layer of cheese turns it into cheese rabokki. Boiled eggs and green onion finish the pot, which is best eaten right away before the noodles swell.
Rice seasoned with sesame oil, salt and toasted sesame is spread on plastic wrap, filled with tuna mayo and squeezed into a ball. A little finely chopped carrot and cucumber goes into the filling as well. These are eaten without reheating, which is why they go into lunchboxes and come along on picnics and school sports days.
Inside the pork casing, soaked glutinous rice swells as it steams and binds the glass noodles and pork blood into a dense, sticky filling. That swelling is why the casing is filled only about 80% of the way and why any puffed spots get a quick needle prick during steaming.
Black soybeans (seoritae) turn this chilled noodle soup a soft gray, and their nuttiness runs deeper than the ivory broth made from ordinary yellow soybeans, with a clean finish. The cooked beans are cooled completely before blending so their nutty aroma is not lost. Milk blended in with the cold water gives the broth a rounder, creamier feel, and salt is the only seasoning. Pressing the broth through a fine strainer removes bits of skin for a smooth, drinkable texture, and an hour in the fridge before serving deepens the flavor. Served in cups over thin somyeon with cucumber, cherry tomatoes, and ice, it works as a single-portion take on kongguksu, the Korean summer noodle dish.
To get the taste of a Korean snack-bar plate, the kimchi is fried with gochujang, dark soy sauce and a pinch of sugar for a sweet edge. Top it with a runny fried egg and crumbled gim (seaweed) and it looks the part too.
Rice flour dough mixed with boiling water ends up as soft as an earlobe, easy to gather around a cube of mozzarella. Each ball is then rolled between the palms until the seam disappears; any gap left is where the melted cheese escapes in the oil.
Tteokbokki sauce, made from gochujang, sugar and soy sauce, coats both chewy rice cakes and thick udon for a bowl that alternates between two kinds of chew. The rice cakes need longer to soften, which gives them and the fish cakes a head start while the udon cooks only briefly. The moment the sauce clings thickly, the udon is plated, before a longer simmer can swell and break it.