KMK: Korean Tteok Cooking

So a few weeks ago my friend Angela and I journeyed over to Jongno to practice for the International Rice Cake Competition. The practice classes designed to help foreigners learn the ins and outs of rice cake making were held at the Institute of Traditional Korean Food. It’s part cooking school part museum part cafe. Definitely go by to grab a snack or sign up for classes or just see what they have on display.

Well, I arrived late and Angela had to leave the proceedings in order to navigate my butt to the proper place. Those little side streets in Insadong get kind of crazy! When I finally arrived Daniel from SeoulEats was still in the middle of giving everyone the run down of how the competition would proceed. Today would be all about practicing and the main competition would be in May, which actually happened last weekend.

Competitors could choose between two different recipes: pressed flower rice cake or coffee Tteok cake. Depending on which you chose to do you would be jumping through different hoops to make them.

For the coffee cake the basic ingredients included rice flour and water. However, there are a number of steps to get that perfect coffee cake. Lots of those steps included plenty of sifting, followed by more sifting, and then followed by even more sifting. Colors, flavors, and what nots could be added as desired if you decided on the free form creative entry otherwise you had to follow the traditional recipe.

The same went for the rice cakes. You’d never guess that those delicate tiny cakes need so much pounding, steaming, frying, and boiling to make it into your mouth. There’s also the inside gooey filling of sweetened red bean, sesame seed, chestnuts, or honey. Colorings to liven your rice cake up included mugwort, gardenia, omija, and strawberry. Garnishes included jujubes, flowers, pine nuts, black sesame, roasted soybean, or yellow bean powder. Yum!


The HCI, head chef in charge, marched us up into the kitchen to begin showing the international newbies the fine art of Korean cooking. They had stations set up for five man teams so Angela and I teamed up with team Russia, a trio of fun college girls, and we set to work. Just getting to work with all the strange looking appliances, do dads, and other contraptions was fun enough for me.

I played photographer for most of it while the gals took on the heavy work of pounding, sifting, stirring, and mixing everything all together. I did do the dishes though so no sneering.

We whipped out our Coffee Cake in no time flat and even managed to give it some personality. It was a shame we couldn’t actually make the competition, because of work, but I’m sure it was a grand affair. And fear not, if you want to take a couple hours on a Saturday to learn the tricks of the Tteok trade then you can head over to the Institute and sign up for their free classes!

Go to Jongno 3 Ga station and take exit 6 or 7 head north and it will be on the left side of the street.

check out their website for a map or call 82-2-741-5411