Rose Tteokbokki is a milder and cheesier Korean rice cake dish than traditional Tteokbokki. Tteokbokki is a popular rice cake dish with a spicy sauce but typically a little too spicy for many people to handle. However, our creamy tteokbokki with rose sauce is a milder version that's more palatable.
Rose tteokbokki tastes savoury, creamy and mildly spicy because of the milk, heavy cream and cheese. The chewy, soft, and springy rice cakes add body and substance while still being light. Cheese and vegetables create a dish that will captivate you with its simplicity and impress you with its deliciousness.
If you have never had this creamy, savoury delight or have never made Korean food before, trying to cook it at home might make you nervous. But don't fear, our simple Korean recipe uses common ingredients you can easily find anywhere.
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What Is Rose Tteokbokki Made Of?
Rose tteokbokki is a twist on classic Korean street food. It uses rose sauce and cheese instead of the classic sauce made mainly of broth and soy sauce. Rose sauce comes from Europe and is usually a mix of tomato sauce and cream. However, this sauce cannot be made in Korea without a few traditional touches, such as gochujang, sesame oil, and soy sauce.
The fusion of Korean and Western elements makes this a delectable dish and it's simple to make. Despite its name, no actual roses or other flowers are used to make this Korean street food. Instead, it gets its name from the light pink colour of the sauce. It is also called Rosé Tteokbokki or Cream Tteokbokki.
There are two different versions of this dish. First, some varieties use a standard European Rose Sauce, combining the cream with tomatoes and spices. This is similar to the pink sauce made by mixing marinara and alfredo sauces.
On the other hand, the more common version of this dish simply uses milk and cream in the Tteokbokki sauce. This makes it a creamy tteokbokki that's thicker, milder, and savoury. Toppings such as vegetables and meat are also added to enhance this dish. Our recipe will focus on the second version, the most common in Korea.
Rose Tteokbokki Ingredients
The main ingredients in making this spicy rose sauce are gochujang, cream, soy sauce, and tteokbokki-tteok and toppings to complete the dish. The addition of dairy will give you the creamy gochujang sauce you need for this popular and trendy street food.
Here are all the ingredients you need to make this creamy, spicy rose tteokbokki:
- Tteokbokki Korean rice cakes
- white onion sliced
- garlic sliced
- vegetable cooking oil
Rose Tteokbokki Sauce
- Korean soup stock, dashi broth or chicken stock
- heavy cream
- whole milk
- Gochujang paste (Korean red pepper paste)
- Gochugaru flakes (Korean red pepper flakes)
- Soy Sauce
- soy sauce
- brown sugar
- Salt, to taste
- Ground black pepper, to taste
- Parmesan cheese
- American cheese or Mozzarella Cheese
- Sesame oil
Additional Toppings
- boiled eggs
- Fish cakes
- Sausages
- Bacon or lamb rashers
- broccoli florets, cut into bite-sized pieces
- mushrooms, sliced
Garnish
- green onions sliced, green part only, for garnishing
- Parmesan cheese
The additional toppings we list here are entirely optional. Instead of broccoli and mushrooms, you can use any kind of vegetable you prefer. For example, try using Napa cabbage, enoki mushrooms, or peas.
Rice Cakes
Fresh or frozen rice cakes will work for our recipe. Just make sure to thaw them. Either way, you should soak them in hot water until soft before you add them to the dish. We soak our tteoks in hot water for about 5 minutes.
Broth (Optional)
We love adding Korean soup stock or Japanese dashi for a seafood umami and more depth in flavour. However, if you prefer a milder rose tteokbokki sauce, you can skip this entirely and use ½ cup of water instead. You can use chicken, beef, or veggie stock if you can't find Korean soup broth or Japanese dashi.
Cheese
We recommend using two types of cheese in our recipe. Parmesan cheese can be used as the topping, and melty cheese can be added to the sauce to maximise the dish's luxurious mouthfeel and savouriness.
Seasoning
Our recipe doesn't add any salt and pepper as it was flavourful enough from just the dashi and mixture of other seasoning sauces. However, you can also add some salt and pepper according to your taste. For further umami, you can add ½ teaspoon of MSG instead of salt. It's not as bad for you as you think.
If you want it spicer, add more Gochujang and Gochugaru. If you want it creamier, add more milk, cream, or cheese.
Easy Rose Tteokbokki Recipe (Creamy and Mild)
Video
Ingredients
- 1 cup korean rice cakes
- ¼ onion sliced
- 2 clove garlic sliced
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 2 Eggs boiled
- ½ cup fish cakes sliced
- 2 sausages vegetarian or chicken
- 3 bacon optional
- 150 g broccoli florets
- 100 g mushrooms
- 1 green onions sliced, green part only
- 1 tablespoon Parmesan Cheese for garnish
Rose Tteokbokki Sauce
- ¾ cup Dashi or water
- ¾ cup milk
- ½ cup heavy cream
- 1 tablespoon gochujang Korean red pepper paste
- 1 tablespoon Gochugaru Korean red pepper flakes
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- salt to taste
- pepper to taste
- 2 tablespoon Parmesan Cheese
- 2 tbsps American cheese or Mozarella cheese
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
Instructions
- First, prepare your toppings. Boil, cool and peel the eggs. Blanch the broccoli florets until almost cooked. Soak the rice cakes in hot water until soft. Slice your sausages, bacon, mushrooms and fishcakes.
- Heat a deep pan or pot over medium heat, and pour the vegetable cooking oil. Once the oil is hot, fry the sausages and bacon until crispy and the fat is rendered. Remove them from the pan or pot and set aside on a plate.
- Then, add your white onion and garlic. Then, fry until the garlic is fragrant. Add the dashi and milk to the pan and stir until hot. Then, add the heavy cream, gochujang, gochugaru, brown sugar, soy sauce, salt, and pepper. Bring the sauce to a low boil.
- Once the sauce is done, add all of your prepared toppings. Simmer until the sauce is thick or to the desired consistency.
- Turn off the heat and put in the two types of cheese. Allow to melt into the rest of the dish. Stir until incorporated, and drizzle the sesame oil over the dish. Top with more parmesan cheese and green onions. Serve your rose tteokbokki while still hot.
Notes
- You can substitute the sausages, bacon, fish cakes, and hard-boiled eggs with 1 cup of sliced tofu for vegetarians and vegans.
- To make the sauce vegan, substitute the heavy cream with coconut milk and the milk with any non-dairy alternative such as soy, oat or almond in the same quantity. It won't taste as authentic, but it will be similar enough.
- You can use any mixture of cheeses. However, we highly recommend using parmesan cheese or mature cheddar as one of the cheeses. They help add a salty creaminess to the dish, which complements the spiciness of the gochugaru and gochujang. We've used American sliced cheese, light cheddar and shredded mozzarella as the second cheese.
- For the additional toppings, you can vary the type and amount of what you put into your rose tteokbokki dish. There is no fixed list, but it is very common to see most places add boiled eggs, fishcakes, sausages and bacon.
- For the boiled eggs, add room-temperature eggs to a pot of boiling water. If you want soft-boiled eggs with a jammy centre, then simmer for 6 minutes. If you prefer hard-boiled eggs, then simmer for 10 minutes.
Nutrition
Calories have been calculated using an online calculator. Nutritional information offered on Honest Food Talks is for general information purposes and is only a rough estimate.
Cooking Tips
If you want to adjust how spicy your dish is, simply increase or decrease the amount of gochugaru chilli flakes you use. You can also add sliced Korean red chillies or any type of fresh sliced chilli if you want it extra spicy. The amount of gochugaru in our recipe is the baseline for medium spicy.
Stop and turn down the heat when the sauce reaches the thickness you want to avoid overcooking the heavy cream. When you scrape your spoon along the bottom of the pot, it should leave a trail that quickly fades. Remember that it continues to cook once you after the heat is turned off.
How To Store
You can store this dish for up to 4 days covered in the fridge. However, the texture of the rice cakes will continue to change and might become less chewy after the first two days. To avoid this, you can store the sauce separately and cook the add-ins like rice cakes or noodles when you want to eat them.
Rose Tteokbokki Vegetarian
To make the Rose Tteokbokki vegetarian, you only need to remove the meat but keep all the other ingredients. To make it more substantial, you can add veggie sausages or vegetables such as broccoli, napa cabbage, or shiitake mushrooms.
We recommend substituting the meat with tofu in the same amount of meat by weight. Additionally, you can also just add extra vegetables. You could also exclude the fish cakes and boiled egg toppings for a vegan version. It's all very easy to do.
Rose Tteokbokki Noodles
Our recipe can also be made without Tteokbokki-tteok. However, if you love rabokki, rose tteokbokki noodles might be fun to try.
Excluding the rice cakes might remove a lot of the dish's texture. However, noodles are usually much easier to find and can add a lot of volume to the dish.
In addition, noodles can increase the quantity and number of servings if you're eating with a big group. They can also be stored for much longer than rice cakes.
You can use any kind of noodle, from instant ramen to egg noodles or rice vermicelli. However, glass noodles are most texturally similar to the original tteokbokki-tteok (translucent noodles made from rice flour). So, if you're in a pinch, even angel hair pasta or fettuccine noodles can also work!
But why stop there? If you want something similar to the shape of the original tteokbokki rice cakes but can't find them where you live, try making your own using rice paper and water.
You can even try using potato wedges or the larger garaetteok Korean rice cakes cut up into smaller pieces. Hotdogs or rice cakes on skewers are also good to use, reminiscent of sotteok. The possibilities are endless.
Of course, you can skip the carbs and use the sauce on a vegetable stir fry instead. But where's the fun in that?
Rose Tteokbokki Vs Tteokbokki
Rose tteokbokki uses milk, cheese, and cream, while traditional tteokbokki does not usually contain dairy products. This is the major difference between rose tteokbokki vs tteokbokki, but we'll explain the other subtle differences below.
Traditionally, this Korean street food is a dish of small rice cakes (called tteokbokki-tteok) stir-fried and simmered in a sauce made of broth, gochujang, soy sauce, and sugar. The sweet, sticky, chewy rice cakes perfectly complement the spicy, savoury sauce.
Rose Tteokbokki stands out with the addition of cream and cheese. This makes the texture luxuriously velvety with a savoury tang. Of course, you can find cheese in a lot of street food, such as Korean corn cheese or cheese ramen. Putting it in traditional tteokbokki, however, is a new thing.
However, this mildly spicy Korean food still has the traditional rice cakes and boiled eggs. You can also remove them in our rose tteokbokki recipe if you want to without losing much flavour or character from the dish.
Rose Tteokbokki Calories
One serving of our rose tteokbokki recipe has around 750 calories. That seems like a lot, but you won't care after you take a bite.
If you want to adjust the macros for this dish, add more vegetables and fewer rice cakes. However, if you want to cut down on calories, you can add this sauce to anything from stir-fried vegetables to a salad.
Because milk, cream and cheese are some of the essential ingredients, it is not vegan to start with. But you can adjust the recipe with our tips below to make it suitable for vegans and vegetarians. Tteokbokki-tteok is gluten-free as well.
We hope you enjoyed our rose tteokbokki recipe, one of the most popular and easy-to-cook Korean dishes. You can experiment and make your own versions using just about anything.
If you tried our recipe, leave a comment below on how it turned out and what you would do differently if you made it again a second time. And if you want more accessible, easy-to-follow guides for all sorts of Asian cuisine, be sure to follow @honestfoodtalks on Instagram. Enjoy.
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