Korean Table

You want tteokbokki tonight, and the nearest Korean grocery is ninety minutes away. Or maybe there is one closer, but you got there and the freezer case had four different bags labeled "rice cake" and no idea which one you needed. Both problems have the same fix, and it starts with knowing what you're supposed to be shopping for in the first place. The Rice Cake You Need for Tteokbokki The tteok in tteokbokki is called garaetteok : plain, cylindrical, roughly the width of your finger, cut into 2-inch sticks. It's made from mepssal, ordinary short-grain non-glutinous rice , steamed and pounded into a smooth dough, then formed into cylinders. That's a different animal from chapssal, Korean glutinous rice, which is what goes into chewy dessert rice cakes like injeolmi. Mix them up and you'll end up with something too sticky and dense for a stir-fried sauce dish. If a bag is labeled " tteokguk tteok ," that's the same dough sliced into thin diag...