Haitai – Spicy Rice Cake Sticks

Spicy rice cakes, or tteokbokki as it’s more commonly known in Korean, are a very common staple in Korean cuisine and one of my favourites. Well, the rice cakes themselves, not so much the spicy ones. I’m more partial to the gungjung version, or royal rice cakes that are savoury but not spicy. I have a delicate tongue constitution.

Part of why I love rice cakes, and really most rice based snacks is the texture – that chewy, bouncy texture that it has. They are notoriously difficult to handle though, as overcooking them makes them too soft and sticky, and under cooking them leaves them too hard and stiff. But when it’s done right…absolutely stunning. Perfection.

This snack looks to emulate the standard spicy rice cakes, so I’m already a bit torn on this. On the one hand I love rice cakes, but on the other I’m not crazy about spicy stuff. It also lacks the key features that I love about rice cakes, which is the texture. Having said that, I do enjoy a nice crunchy snack, so that’s less of an issue.

One thing that kind of caught me off guard at first is how sweet they are. They are sweet in a honey glazed sort of way, kind of how you would expect a fried dough snack is when they are coated in a sugar or honey glaze. The profile is more of a sweet snack that has a spicy aftertaste to it. While the spiciness is more of a tail end deal, it certainly isn’t an afterthought as the heat builds up pretty quickly. It’s not unbearably hot for a spice wimp like me, but the heat builds up enough that I can feel it in my scalp. I don’t know if that’s because of the sugar, or if the spice is very mild to begin with, but I find the overall sweet and spicy balance to be fairly good. It’s kind of addictive.

The texture starts off a bit like you would expect a glazed nut or almond to be, it’s got a bit of firmness to it’s outer shell. The snack itself is also very crunchy but not too hard. They have a satisfying crunch without feeling heavy, and are still fairly light so I could see myself ploughing through a couple of handfuls of these before feeling anything. Kind of what I would expect from a wheat based snack. They kind of remind me similar wheat based snacks that are basically deep fried pasta. Except these have that glaze on the top that gives it a candied texture. Tasty stuff.

As I’ve said before, I’m not crazy about spicy, but the sweetness helps to balance things out and I thoroughly enjoyed this. Enough that I would seriously consider getting this again. Now if they made just a savoury, non-spicy version…instant buy. I can’t imagine these are particularly hard to obtain, given that tteokbokki is basically a staple, and these are pretty good.