158 recipes. Page 6 of 7
Popular Korean street food recipes
The usual way cheese sticks go wrong is the melted cheese breaking through the coating and running into the oil. That is why these get two coats of parsley breadcrumbs and a stint in the freezer before a short fry. Serve with tomato sauce for dipping.
There is no gochujang in this sauce. Lemon juice, honey, and soy sauce boil until glossy, the twice-fried thigh pieces go in, and the tossing is over within 20 seconds. What stays afterward is the black pepper from the marinade.
Modeled on convenience-store cup tteokbokki, this one adds mala sauce to the gochujang for a tingle on the tongue. Chili flakes raise the heat, and more mala sauce raises the numbness. Brands of mala sauce vary a lot in saltiness, though, so start with a single tablespoon.
Octopus turns rubbery quickly under heat, so both the blanch and the grilling are kept short. A slice of ginger in the blanching water tames the fishy smell, and the glaze of gochujang, soy sauce, sugar, garlic, and sesame oil goes on in thin layers as the skewers cook.
Daegu's flat mandu hold less than a spoonful of filling each, so wrapper and filling press into one thin sheet. With only glass noodles, garlic chives, and cabbage inside, they taste light until dipped in soy sauce sharpened with vinegar and chili flakes.
These are the squid rings Korean street stalls and snack bars fry to order, made at home. The batter is mixed with cold water and stirred only briefly, deliberately leaving small lumps; those lumps are what make the coating rough and crunchy.
The goal is the school-gate snack-stand kind: soft, puffy wheat rice cakes seasoned sweet and hot all the way through. Wheat cakes swell easily, so they soak in cold water for 10 minutes first to rinse off surface starch. A pinch of black pepper at the end pushes it closer to market-stall tteokbokki.
Crushed instant noodles, fried crisp and tossed in a sticky gochujang, ketchup, and corn syrup glaze, taste like the snack sold outside Korean stationery shops near schools in the 1980s and 1990s. If deep-frying is a hassle, 5 minutes in a 180-degree air fryer does the job. Keep the seasoning packet aside and add a little if the glaze tastes flat.
Water and milk make the base, with gochujang stirred in, and the rice cakes and fish cake simmer in it. Milk tends to split over high heat, so the pot stays at medium-low the whole time, and the mozzarella goes in just before the heat goes off to melt on what is left.
There is no meat in the filling, only king oyster mushroom, tofu and garlic chives. Both the mushroom and the tofu hold a lot of water, so the minced mushroom is dry-fried in a pan without oil first and the tofu is wrung out hard in a cloth.
The shrimp is chopped coarsely, not ground, so you bite into firm pieces of it in the soft pork filling. Steamed, the wrappers turn translucent and show the pink shrimp through; pan-fried, only the bottoms go golden and crisp. Chopped cheongyang chili in vinegar soy sauce makes a spicy dip.
Split open a coin-stamped Korean 10-won bread and mozzarella stretches out in long strands, with sweet corn kernels scattered through the salty cheese. The batter is mixed only until no dry flour remains, since extra stirring turns the thin crust tough instead of lightly crisp.
Sundae, Korean blood sausage, alternates with onion and green onion on the skewer before it goes into the pan. The onions lose water and turn sweet as they cook, a break between rich mouthfuls of sausage. The glaze mixes gochujang with ketchup, oligosaccharide syrup, and soy sauce.
Chapssal sundae, sticky-rice blood sausage, is already cooked, so frying it is not about cooking it through but about a crisp shell and a center that gets hot. The batter is thickened with potato starch, and two rounds in the oil firm it up. A dusting of chili powder while hot, mustard on the side.
Closely scored Vienna sausages, rolled on skewers in a pan, open out like butterfly wings as they heat, and the cut edges brown and crisp. Ketchup and mustard go on the side; thread rice cake between the sausages and you have sotteok sotteok.
Garae-tteok and Vienna sausages alternate on the skewer and brown first; the gochujang glaze only goes on over low heat for the last minute or so. If you are wary of the heat, hold back some glaze, taste, and add more only if you want it.
Rice cakes and cocktail sausages take turns on the skewer, and the glaze has more ketchup than gochujang, so it tastes sweet and tangy more than hot. The glaze goes on only when the skewers are nearly cooked, with sesame seeds scattered over at the end.
Soy sauce, minced garlic, and syrup with a little vinegar make a glaze that is salty-sweet with no heat. Boiled down too long, the soy turns harshly salty, so the chicken goes in while the sauce is still thin and gets just a quick glossy coat over high heat.
Korean street vendors sell this egg bread in winter; here it bakes in a home oven. Muffin cups stand in if you lack the special molds, and eggs left at room temperature cook more evenly on top. After about 15 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius, the white is set and the yolk sits between soft and firm.
As cabbage and onion wilt over high heat, the moisture they release loosens the gochujang sauce so it coats every slice of sundae, Korean blood sausage. Add rice cakes and it becomes tteoksuni; some finish it with cheese on top.
Seared tripe, briefly warmed sundae (Korean blood sausage), and cabbage that keeps some bite all share one pan, each with a different chew. Equal parts gochujang and gochugaru make the heat unmistakable.
Without the tripe of sundae-gopchang-bokkeum, this stir-fry leans on cabbage, onion, and scallion for a lighter plate. The vegetables are cut thick so they still have bite after cooking, and soy sauce in the gochujang glaze makes it as salty as it is spicy.
Glutinous rice dough is wrapped around mozzarella and fried, with sweet chili sauce on the side. The shell is thin and crisp, and past a chewy layer the cheese pulls into long strands.
Half sausage and half mozzarella on one stick, so a bite at the seam gets salt and a long cheese pull at once. Cooked, cooled sweet potato cubes and breadcrumbs are pressed into the pancake batter before frying, leaving the outside knobbly and sweet in patches.