There are many kinds of rice cake in Korea.

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Ga-rae-tteok soup that makes you one year older on New Year’s Day¹

Along with red bean rice cake, sirutteok, injeolmi, rainbow rice cake, and obang rice cake that are served on the table, garae-tteok, which is an ingredient in Seollal rice cake soup, and songpyeon for Chuseok can also be considered a type of rice cake.

Garae-tteok is made by stretching non-glutinous rice flour and is usually eaten as is while it is still warm or is dried and roasted.

According to seasonal customs, on the first day of the first lunar month, it is cut and boiled in soup with various ingredients to symbolize getting one year older.

This tteokguk-tteok is made by cutting garae-tteok.

When slicing garae-tteok, it is usually hardened for about a day before use.

This is because if you cut it while it is soft, it will not cut well, so it is better to use it after it has hardened. If you harden it for too long, it will become hard as a stone and cannot be eaten.

​Generally, garaetteok is mostly used as is without adding other ingredients such as beans, red beans, or mugwort, and the rice cakes for tteokbokki are shorter and much thinner than garaetteok.

When Seollal is coming up, when the traditional market is busy, the long lines of people waiting to fry the rice, the raw material for making gangjeong, and the long lines at the mill to make garaetteok are memories of that time. Sometimes, people go to the mill with rice and ask for garaetteok to be made.

When making garaetteok with a machine in a factory, hot rice is pushed out with a screw, and it is made according to a mold (also called bunchang in Korean) that fits the size.

As for commemorative events, there is Garaetteok Day on November 11th, which is originally Farmers’ Day, but it was overshadowed by the commercialism of a famous stick snack (Pepero), so it can be said to be Day Marketing created to promote Farmers’ Day.

It is said that they developed a functional product that does not stick to teeth, and the Rural Development Administration developed a rice cake product that does not harden immediately but remains soft for a long time.

Other rice cakes include Sirutteok, which is made by steaming glutinous rice flour in a steamer and adding red beans, beans, chestnuts, and other ingredients to enhance the flavor, Songpyeon, which is made during Chuseok, Baekseolgi, which is often used for birthdays or banquets, and Injeolmi, which is made by steaming glutinous rice cakes, pounding them with a tteokme, and then coating them with soybean powder or red bean powder.

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