Hotteok: Korean Street Food Sweet-Stuffed Pancakes
Image Credit: The Bakeanista

With Korean food making waves around the world and people warming up to the cuisine, the street food of Korea shouldn’t be left too far behind. The hotteok, also known as hoeddeok, is one of Korea’s most popular street food offerings, alongside the scallion pancakes. Made of yeasted dough and filled with brown sugar, cinnamon, peanuts, these pancakes are greased and gridled and pressed flat into a circle.

Typically, these pancakes have a crispy on the outside, gooey on the inside texture when cooked. Folklore has it that Chinese merchants who moved to Korea in the 19th century to sell their wares, were the ones who made and sold hotteok. With evolving times, what goes into a hotteok has diversified into many other flavours ranging from green tea to chocolate as sweet options and pizza or corn as savoury options. While this type of street food is usually eaten for breakfast or as a snack, these hot cakes are pretty easy to recreate at home. You can roll and stuff a batch of these gridle cakes and freeze them until ready to be cooked or make them fresh and enjoy. Beware, these are addictive!

Recipe:

Ingredients

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Tteokbokki: Learn To Make This Korean Street Food

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
  • ¼ cup water
  • ¼ cup milk
  • ¼ cup brown sugar
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 3 tablespoons chopped peanuts
  • Oil for gridling

Method

  • Combine the flour, sugar, salt and dry yeast in a large mixing bowl. Warm up the milk and water together and pour into the mixing bowl while you stir simultaneously, making the dough into rough clumps.
  • Empty the contents of the mixing bowl on to a clean work surface and knead into a smooth ball of dough. Grease the bowl and place the dough back into it. Cover and let it rest for about an hour, until it has risen considerably.
  • Mix together the brown sugar, cinnamon and peanuts and set aside. Closer to the end of an hour, punch the dough to release any trapped air and knead once more. Rest for another 30 minutes before dividing into tangerine-sized balls.
  • Roll out each ball into a 3-4-inch circle and place a spoonful or two of the cinnamon sugar filling in the centre. Bring together the edges of the dough towards the middle and envelope the filling within.
  • Roll out the stuffed dough again, this time more gently than the first, in order to contain the sugar filling within the layers of dough. Heat some oil in a frying pan and place each stuffed circle in the oil and fry on a medium-high heat.
  • Cook until the outside starts to develop a golden-brown crust and flip over to repeat the process. This should take about a couple of minutes, per side. Once ready, remove from the pan and place on absorbent paper towels before serving warm while the sugar is still melted and gooey.