What is hotteok?
In Korea you buy hotteok at street stalls in winter, tucked into a paper cup so the syrup does not run over your fingers. Chinese traders brought the pastry to Korea at the end of the 19th century. The name combines "ho", an old word for foreigners from the north, and "tteok", the word for rice cake. Even so, classic hotteok has nothing to do with rice, and the dough is made of wheat flour and yeast.
Dough and filling
The dough turns out soft and slightly sticky. Do not add extra flour, or the pancakes turn tough and dry. Oil your hands instead, and nothing sticks. If you want a chewier, more elastic dough like chapssal hotteok, replace 50 g of the flour with glutinous rice flour.
For the filling, use light or dark brown sugar. Muscovado tastes more strongly of caramel. Chop the nuts coarsely, because fine nut meal soaks up the syrup. One heaping tablespoon of filling per hotteok is enough.
How to make hotteok
Shaping
Press a piece of dough into a flat disc in your oiled palm. Put the filling in the middle, pull up the edges and pinch them tightly together on top. The seam has to be sealed, or the sugar runs into the pan.
Frying and flattening
Heat 2 to 3 tbsp oil over medium heat and put the ball in seam side down. After about 30 seconds the underside is set. Now press the ball with an oiled spatula or a hotteok press to about 1 cm thick. Fry both sides golden brown and turn the heat down as soon as the dough browns too quickly. The sugar inside needs a few minutes to melt.
Common mistakes
- Tear in the dough: The sugar runs out, burns on the bottom of the pan and smokes. Pinch each seam twice.
- Pan too hot: The dough turns dark outside while sugar crystals remain inside. Fry over medium heat.
- Bitten into right away: The syrup is over 100 °C. Let the hotteok cool for two minutes.
Variations
- Ssiat hotteok from Busan: Vendors cut open the fried pancake and fill it with sunflower and pumpkin seeds.
- Japchae hotteok: A savory version with glass noodles and vegetables in the filling.
- Green tea hotteok: A teaspoon of matcha in the dough turns it green and adds a bitter note.
For a vegan version, use oat or soy milk instead of milk. At an Asian grocery store you can also find ready-made mixes with flour, yeast and filling in a bag, and you only add water and oil.
Reheating and freezing
Hotteok taste best fresh from the pan. Reheat leftovers in a dry pan or in the toaster, because in the microwave the dough turns rubbery. You can freeze fried hotteok individually and reheat them from frozen in a pan over low heat.
What to serve with it
In Korea you drink sujeonggwa with hotteok, a cold cinnamon-ginger punch. Other sweet street snacks are bungeoppang with red bean paste, the twisted doughnuts kkwabaegi and gyeran-bbang, a bread roll with a whole egg. You also find walnuts in hodugwaja, small walnut cakes from Cheonan.
