If there ever was a way to make this healthy, it’d be to cook it entirely at home. Add veggies to your heart’s content. Sprinkle as much sesame seeds as you’d like. Add the plant protein of your choice.
Dare I say this was the best tteokbokki I’ve ever had?
The perfect combo when I just need a taste of home, an everyday meal.
Traditional Korean meals have three essential components: rice, soup, and kimchi. And on top of those, you start adding in more side dishes.
The essential three are there - warm multigrain rice straight out of the pressure cooker, seaweed soup in its savory glory, and kimchi that I just started to ferment 2 days ago. Along with those are soybean sprouts, sweet and savory black soybeans, boiled spinach in Korean miso (doenjang), and some pickled perilla leaves.
This is the kind of home meal I crave, I recreate using my own hands.
Classic warm and spicy Korean comfort food, awesome for a winter day.
To make Maangchi’s recipe vegan, you can replace the entirety of spam and sausages with plant based hot dog sausages (the bland type without any herbs and spices) and an entire package of firm tofu. For the broth, use more kombu and shiitake in place of anchovies and pork, and for kimchi use vegan kimchi. Add 1-2 tbsp sesame oil at the very end because this would not have any oil, unlike the meaty version.
My version included anchovies in the broth and fish sauce in the kimchi.
