The chewy cylindrical pieces in Korean tteokbokki are made mainly from rice.
Tteokbokki is a Korean dish of garae-tteok, or long cylindrical rice cakes, simmered in a seasoned sauce. The familiar street-food version is often colored red by gochujang, Korea’s fermented chili paste, and may also contain eomuk fish cakes, scallions, garlic, and boiled eggs.
The dish’s name combines tteok, meaning rice cake, with bokki, referring to a stir-fried or cooked preparation. Earlier forms of tteokbokki were associated with royal-court cuisine and used a soy-sauce-based seasoning. The spicy red street-food style became especially prominent in the twentieth century.
Some modern products use wheat flour or blended ingredients, so not every commercial rice cake is identical. However, the defining traditional cake in tteokbokki is made from rice, which gives it its characteristic springy chew.