158 recipes. Page 5 of 7
Popular Korean street food recipes
Roasted whole in the skin for a long time, sweet potatoes turn sticky and honey-like just under the skin. Pumpkin sweet potatoes (hobak-goguma) come out moister, and a day or two at room temperature before roasting makes them sweeter still. Butter, honey and cinnamon can go on top once they are done.
When the X cut in each chestnut shell curls open into a V in the oven, they are done. The cut goes just short of the inner skin: too shallow and the shell will not peel, too deep and the nut splits. Wrapped in a dry towel for about five minutes after roasting, the inner skin loosens and comes away easily.
The word gungjung, royal court, points back to the food of the Joseon palace. Soy sauce and sesame oil do the seasoning, so there is no heat, and bulgogi-cut beef and shiitake go in with the rice cakes. The beef is seared only on the outside and set aside, returning to the pan after the rice cakes have softened.
Egg mixed with finely minced carrot, garlic chives and onion is poured in several rounds and rolled up, then cut into bite-size pieces for skewers, each face showing a vegetable-flecked spiral. Coarse vegetables thicken the layers and the roll loses its shape, which is why they are chopped as fine as possible.
Each muffin cup gets sweet batter halfway up, a little chopped ham, and a whole egg cracked on top before baking. You see it often on Seoul streets in winter, and paper muffin cups give the same shape without a special pan.
A whole hard-boiled egg in a thin batter shell gives three layers in one bite: crisp coating, firm white, and a fully set yolk. Excess batter is shaken off before frying, or a heavy coat buries the egg's own flavor.
Shrimp, squid and clams share one batter, but each gets its own prep. The shrimp have the tendons along their backs cut so they fry straight, and the squid is scored so it does not shrink up in the oil. Everything goes through the oil only once, briefly, at 170°C.
Raw kabocha cut into thin crescents cooks through to a soft, fluffy center before the batter has a chance to darken. The batter is equal parts flour and potato starch mixed with ice water, so the coating stays thin. Eat them warm with vinegar soy sauce.
Thin batter baked in a walnut-shaped mold wraps around sweet red bean paste and a toasted walnut half, leaving a lightly browned shell and a moist center. Toasting the walnuts at 160 degrees Celsius for 5 minutes beforehand gives the finished cakes a noticeably stronger nutty aroma. The snack began as a specialty of Cheonan in South Chungcheong Province and is now sold at highway rest stops and traditional markets across Korea.
The milk dough is left to rise until nearly doubled, so the steamed buns come out soft and moist. Pull one apart and the sweet red bean paste appears in a puff of steam.
One skewer holds both a sausage and a stick of mozzarella under a thick pancake-mix batter and a breadcrumb coat, so each bite is rough and crunchy outside, chewy in the middle, and stretchy with cheese. What sets the Korean version apart from an American corn dog is the roll in sugar straight out of the oil, which plays against the salty sausage. Ketchup and mustard usually go on top.
Glutinous rice flour in the yeast dough makes these pancakes chewier than an all-wheat dough, and the brown sugar inside melts into a hot cinnamon syrup as they cook. Pressing them flat with a spatula caramelizes the outside, but press too thin and the filling breaks through and sticks to the pan. Chopped peanuts give the syrup some crunch.
Sunflower and pumpkin seeds go into the brown sugar and cinnamon filling, and they stay crunchy inside the melted syrup. The yeast is started in warm milk instead of water.
No glaze, no syrup: this chicken leaves the fryer and goes straight to the plate. Bone-in pieces get a thin coat of runny batter made from flour, potato starch, and cold water, fry twice, and drain on a rack. Leftovers crisp up again after 6 to 8 minutes in a 200°C oven.
Butter-toasted bread stays crisp underneath while warm slices of injeolmi, a soft rice cake usually coated in roasted soybean powder, stretch on top, finished with more of that nutty powder and a thin line of honey. Too much honey soaks the bread. A thin drizzle, eaten right away, keeps the toast crisp underneath.
Think of the black sauce on jjajangmyeon noodles, clinging to rice cakes instead. Chunjang, the black bean paste, is fried first in the fat left by ground pork, onion, and cabbage, which takes away its raw, chalky edge. There is no gochujang, so nothing here is spicy. A pile of cucumber matchsticks on top adds crunch against the thick sauce.
After 12 to 15 minutes in the steamer the wrappers go translucent, showing the filling of pork, tofu, glass noodles, and garlic chives. The dip is soy sauce with vinegar and chili flakes. Fold a big batch and freeze some, and a few can go straight from the freezer into the steamer later.
Store-bought jjondeugi, a chewy Korean snack sold in flat sheets, gets warmed in a pan and brushed with a thin sweet-and-spicy gochujang glaze. A plain, unseasoned product works better than one already coated in spicy seasoning, since the added glaze is easier to balance.
Chopped kimchi goes into the pork filling, so its sourness and heat cut through the richness of the meat. Browning, steaming and crisping all happen in one pan, and the soy dip gets an extra splash of vinegar.
Kimchi goes in at nearly the same weight as the pork, so the first thing you taste is its sourness. Short-cut garlic chives and pressed tofu fill out the mix, seasoned with soy sauce, garlic, and sesame oil.
Each cup of the takoyaki pan gets octopus plus chopped kimchi and scallion. Sauce, mayonnaise, and bonito flakes still go on top as usual, but the kimchi comes through underneath, sour and hot.
Napa cabbage kimchi, pressed just enough to stop it dripping, goes into a thin batter and comes out crisp outside and still juicy and tangy within. Squeezing it bone dry drains away much of the flavor. The batter only needs a surface dry enough to cling to.
Balls of yeast dough are fried bare, with no batter, then brushed with warm honey while still hot and rolled in chopped peanuts. This is a local snack from Tongyeong. Swapping the honey for rice syrup softens the sweetness and brings it closer to traditional Korean confections.
Butter dough that rises twice before it is twisted and fried gives a doughnut that stretches and chews when you bite it. Roll it in sugar the moment it leaves the oil, while it is hot enough for the sugar to stick.