For a crowded weekend, plenty of households turn to a cheese tteokbokki hot pot. The pot goes salty easily, since Korean chili paste and kimchi are both strong on their own. Rice cakes cooked too long fall apart and lose their chew.
Napa cabbage and onion line the bottom of the pot, everything else is stacked on top and only then does the sauce go over, which keeps the base from catching. The instant noodles and the cheese go in once the liquid is boiling.
This batch weighs about 4.1kg, at roughly 114 calories per 100g.
Method
Peel the onion, trim the root from the leek, rinse both, drain them and slice them thinly. Cut the tofu, fish cake and sausage into bite sized pieces.
Rinse the napa cabbage, soak it in lightly salted water, rinse it again and cut it into 4 to 5cm lengths. Rinse the beef, pat it dry, cut it into long slices and roll them up.
Mix the hot pot sauce: put 2 tablespoons gochujang, 1 teaspoon minced garlic and 1 tablespoon soy sauce in a bowl and stir gently until smooth.
Lay 300g napa cabbage and the onion in the bottom of the hot pot, then stack 350g rice cakes, the tofu, sausage, fish cake, rolled beef and kimchi on top. Pour the sauce over and scatter the leek on last.
Pour in 2 liters of pork bone broth, cover and bring to a boil.
Once it is boiling, drop in the 2 packets of noodles and the 2 slices of cheese and cook until the noodles are soft and the cheese has melted.
Tips
Without pork bone broth, a stock of dried anchovies and dried kombu is the broth this hot pot usually takes anyway.
Rice cakes, Korean fish cake and gochujang are sold at Korean grocers and import counters.
The noodles and cheese go in last, since standing swells the noodles and they drink up the broth.
A light hand with the seasoning at the start is wise, as kimchi and chili paste are already salty.
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