Tteok (Korean Rice Cakes)

Korean rice cakes made from glutinous or short-grain rice flour, shaped into thick cylinders (garae-tteok) for tteokbokki, or into flat discs (tteokguk-tteok) for rice cake soup. The texture is dense and chewy — significantly more so than pasta or gnocchi. They hold their shape in simmering liquid without dissolving, absorbing sauce from the outside while maintaining the chewy interior.

In cooking, tteok functions as the starchy absorptive substrate in Korean simmered dishes — the same structural role that pasta or polenta plays in Italian cooking. Tteok in tteokbokki sauce is conceptually identical to rigatoni in arrabbiata: a chewy vehicle for an intense chili-tomato sauce. Find fresh or refrigerated tteok at Korean grocery stores. Dried tteok requires soaking; frozen keeps for months.