Market Tteokbokki · Paik Jong-won

Slice the green onion on the diagonal, or halve it lengthways and cut it into long pieces — either way he specifies.

Cut the cabbage and the fish cake sheets into bite-size pieces.

Rinse both kinds of tteok briefly under running water and drain them.

💡 This washes off surface starch and any oil coating. Skip it and that loose starch thickens your sauce into paste before the tteok is even cooked.

Into a wide pot put the water, soy sauce, brown sugar, gochujang, coarse gochugaru, fine gochugaru, green onion and cabbage — all of it, at once — and bring it to a boil.

💡 No stock, no sautéing, no separate sauce bowl. The green onion and cabbage ARE the stock — 240 g of scallion boiled in 1 L of water is what gives the broth its sweetness and market-stall smell.

Let it boil hard for 3–4 minutes over high heat, until the sugar and gochujang have fully dissolved and the liquid is a smooth, even red with no paste sitting on the bottom.

Once the broth is boiling, add the hard-boiled eggs and both kinds of tteok.

Boil 5–7 minutes, stirring every minute or so, until the tteok soften and swell and no longer feel hard at the core when you bite one.

💡 Stir. Tteok sinks and welds to the bottom of the pot, and sugar-heavy sauce burns there fast and silently.

Add the MSG now if you are using it.

When the sauce has come back up to a boil, add the fish cake.

Keep boiling, stirring often, until the sauce reduces and thickens — 5–8 minutes. It is ready when it coats the back of a spoon and a ladle dragged across the base leaves a trail that closes slowly.

💡 This is the only judgement call in the whole recipe. Remember it thickens further off the heat, so stop while it still looks slightly looser than you want.

Halve the eggs if you like, and serve straight from the pot while it is glossy and hot.