Jjajang Tteokbokki Recipe | Cheap Lazy Vegan (2024)

Jjajang tteokbokki (짜장 떡볶이), also known as Korean Black Bean Tteokbokki, is a delicious 15 mins recipe made with chewy Korean rice cakes in a black bean sauce! You’ll find this dish in South Korea, similar to the very popular and traditional tteokbokki (떡볶이) but made with Korean black bean paste / sauce.

Tteokbokki is a very popular dish using tteok, which is chewy Korean rice cakes. Jjajang is a delicious and savoury Korean black bean paste, inspired by Chinese food. You may have heard of Jjajangmyeon which is black bean noodles. So by cooking black bean sauce or black bean paste with tteok, you make jjajang tteokbokki!

This Jjajang tteokbokki recipe takes 15 mins to cook and is a savoury and non-spicy version of the popular tteokbokki.

Recipe for Jjajang Tteokbokki

To make jjajang tteokbokki (aka 짜장 떡볶이), you should know that tteokbokki is made with one of Korea’s most beloved ingredients – tteok. Tteok is the Korean word for rice cakes!

Korean rice cakes, tteok, are made with rice flour and transformed into soft, slightly sticky and incredibly chewy pieces of “rice dough” as I like to call it. These can be made into many shapes but for tteokbokki, the most common shape we use is the cylinder-shaped rice cakes. Truthfully, you can use whatever shapes you can find but if you have a Korean supermarket near you, I’m sure you can find these cylinder-shaped rice cakes.

The next main star ingredient for this tteokbokki is the black bean sauce. Jjajang is Korean black bean paste or black bean sauce. You can easily find Korean-style black bean paste (Chunjang) in any Korean (or usually Asian) supermarket. If you want to make a homemade Korean black bean sauce recipe, check out my Everyday Asian Recipes ebook (available to download here)!

For this tteokbokki recipe, we are basically putting together savoury black bean sauce with chewy and soft Korean rice cakes to create a delicious jjajang tteokbokki. Feel free to switch up the vegetables and other ingredients in my ingredient list to your liking!

Ingredients

• Korean rice cakes (tteok)
• Korean-style black bean paste (Chunjang)
• Green onions or scallions
• Onion
• Cabbage (or vegetables of choice)
• Garlic
• Oil
• Soy sauce or soy-free alternative
• Sugar

• Sesame Seeds (optional)
• Smoked Tofu or seasoned tofu (optional)

You can’t make the recipe gluten-free since the main star, chunjang/black bean paste has gluten and can’t really be substituted unless you know of an alternative.

The recipe is soy-free, simply by using a soy-free alternative to soy sauce.

How To Make Tteokbokki (Jjajang)

If your Tteok (Korean rice cakes) are frozen and stuck together, add them into a large bowl with cold water to separate them for about 5-10 minutes before using them.

Prepare your vegetables of choice. I finely chopped green onions or scallions and separated the white part from the green. Chopped onion, shredded cabbage and minced garlic. I also sliced up smoked tofu, but this is optional.

Begin making your Jjajang Tteokbokki by adding oil to a large wok or deep pan on medium-high heat. Add black bean paste on one side and whites of green onions, diced onion and minced garlic on the other side.

Sautee for about 2-3 minutes separately then mix together.

Add in shredded cabbage and soy sauce and mix well. Stir fry for 2-3 minutes until the cabbage begins to wilt. leave them in.

By this point, your TTeok (Korean rice cakes) should be separated in the cold water. Drain them and add the TTeok (Korean rice cakes) into the black bean sauce with sugar and water. Optionally, you can add sliced tofu here too.

Bring to a boil and cook for about 10 mins or until the rice cakes are softened and the sauce has thickened (max 15 minutes).

When ready to serve, top with the rest of the green onions and sesame seeds (optional) and enjoy hot (I prefer to eat it a few hours after making it, because the flavours really soak in)! If you are serving this later, make sure to heat it up completely until the rice cakes are very soft and chewy again.

NEED MORE VEGAN RECIPE INSPO? CHECK THESE OUT:

• Spicy Tteokbokki
• Gochujang Pasta
• Korean Soft Tofu Stew (Sundubu jjigae)

If you enjoy Korean recipes, try these Korean seaweed rice rolls called Kimbap! You can actually dip these into the tteokbokki sauce as these two dishes are often served together.