The Warm, Sticky-Sweet Resurgence of Hotteok
The New York Times
Crisp and chewy on the outside, gooey on the inside, the popular street food feels nostalgic for some Korean Americans, novel to others.
The most challenging part of eating hotteok is the waiting, said the chef Judy Joo. It takes a few minutes for the hot sugar encased in the crisp, chewy pancakes to go from molten, burn-your-mouth-off goo to warm, sticky goodness.
As a child, she visited stalls in Seoul that sold the Korean treat during the winter. “It was torture, standing there in the cold” with the joyful scent of sugar and cinnamon filling the air, she said.
These days, Ms. Joo, 47, a chef and cookbook author, makes her own hotteok at home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She combines bread flour with sweet rice flour, and stuffs each pancake with a filling of muscovado, peanuts, cinnamon and salt, then fries the plump rounds until they’re a brilliant golden brown.
