1. Ingredients for Hotteok
-Primary ingredients: Flour and sugar
-Secondary ingredients: Nut products as neeed
2. Taste evaluation
-Spicy:☆☆☆☆☆
-Salty:☆☆☆☆☆
-Sweet:★★★★☆
-Sour:☆☆☆☆☆
-Toasted flavor:★★☆☆☆
3.
Introduction to Hotteok (Korean pancake)
Hotteok
is popular snacks for Koreans that you can easily spot on streets. It
is baked wheat flour batter with sugar inside it.
Barbarians
used to be called Orangkae(barbarian) by Koreans during the wars to
despise the Chinese.
Hotteok
means it is Tteok (rice cake) for Orangkae (胡),
which means that Hotteok is not Korean traditional food but was
introduced to Korea from China.
Hotteok
was introduced in Korea during the time under the rule of Japanese
imperialism.
The
Great Qing sent their troops of approximately 3 thousand men to Korea
along with Chinese merchants who started to sell stuff to their
soldiers.
Among
them, some cooked and sold Chinese Hotteok. Koreans saw Chinese
people eating it and called it Hotteok, which means Tteok for
barbarians.
Chinese
Hotteok uses garlic chives and pork in it or makes it hard like
yóutiáo. The
people who could not go back to China after the collapse of the Great
Qing stayed in Korea and made variations of their Hotteok according
to Korean people’s taste using honey or grain syrup.
Canon EOS 550D | f/4.5 | iso 100 | 2012:01:04 14:55:58 | Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode | 20mm
Hotteok
is made from wheat flour batter with sugar in it and simply baked
with oil. Hotteok that’s just baked is crispy, chewy and sweet from
warm sugar.
It’s
cheap and big enough for a meal. So anybody can enjoy as snacks.
You
can’t miss Hotteok shop while you travel in Korea. It tastes like
cake, bread or donut so I want you to try it for once.
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4.
Kinds of Hotteok
As
Hotteok could be good snacks for kids as well as adults, you will see
many variations cooked in different ways for each generation.
Among
many, I’ll introduce you a few famous variations that have been
aired on TV.
-
Regular Hotteok: Korean pancake made of flour batter with sugar in it
and baked with oil.
-
Ssiat(seeds) Hotteok: Seeds (sunflower seeds) are put in the regular
Hotteok and fried with magarin(artificial butter). Originated in
Busan and very tasty.
-
Japchae(glass noodles) Hotteok: Glass noodles are put in the regular
Hotteok and baked with oil. Famous in Namdaemun, not so sweet but
rather tastes like Tofu.
-
Nokcha(green tea) Hotteok: Sugar is put in the flour batter mixed
with green tea and baked with oil. Smells like green tea
5.
How to enjoy Hotteok even more
Tourists
love Hotteok even if it’s their first try.
You’ll
find people enjoying Hotteok mostly standing in front of old carb
bars on the street because it’s one of most popular street foods.
If
it’s uncomfortable for you to eat it standing, you could also go to
a pretty café and enjoy it sitting on the sofa.
It’s even sold at a dessert café because it’s THAT popular. There are a few fancy Hotteok shops in downtowns of Seoul, especially in Insa-dong or Samcheong-dong.
Why
don’t you sit down at a cute café and relax from your trip with
this sweet Hotteok?
Oh,
I almost forgot! You have to be careful when you eat the filling
consisted of hot brown sugar. Hotteok also means you have to blow on
it like ‘Ho~ho~’ with your mouth to cool it down before you eat
it.
Even
if it’s cool outside, sugar remains hot for a long time so you
should enjoy even if it takes time to eat it.
