The Korean Traditional Rice Cake Soup of Tteokguk on New Year's Day

A Brief History of Tteokguk

Korea’s New Year Soup

Tteokguk is Korean Rice Cake Soup that is a must for Koreans on New Year’s Day. This hearty warm soup has a delicious savory broth and chewy rice cake rounds that makes it the ultimate comfort food any time of the year.

In South Korea, it’s said that eating a bowl of rice-cake soup on New Year’s Day — whether by the Gregorian or Lunar calendar — marks the passing of a year and turning a year older. The rice cakes, white as snow and shaped like little coins, symbolize purity and fortune; the long, cylindrical logs from which these rounds are cut, called garae tteok, are said to represent long life. Traditionally, the main method of counting a person’s age, known as “Korean age,” involved starting from 1 year old at birth — allotting for the time spent in the womb, one theory says — and then appending another year on Jan. 1.

Although it’s not certain when Koreans started to incorporate rice cakes into a soup, the dish is mentioned in the 19th-century book of customs, Dongguksesigi. While the ingredients and taste of tteokguk vary by region, the broth is generally made by simmering a protein (beef, chicken, pork, or the more traditional pheasant) in a soy sauce-seasoned stock. The stock is then strained to clarify the broth, and long cylinder-shaped rice cakes are added to and boiled in the clear broth. Garnish such as pan-fried, julienned egg, seaweed, and spring onions are added for flavor.

Varieties of tteokguk include manduguk, which includes dumplings and is especially common in Seoul, and jogaengi tteokguk, a soup that has its roots in Gaeseong, North Korea and consists of gourd-shaped rice cakes.

Perhaps the most important holiday in Korea, Seollal (Lunar New Year’s Day; the first day of the lunar calendar) is a time when family members come together to share their blessings and perform ancestral rites such as charge, a traditional ceremony in which various foods such as tteokguk are prepared as an offering to the family’s ancestors.

Korean Cuisine Series: New year’s day Soup – 떡국

Another important event that happens on Seollal is that one year is added to everyone’s age. It is said that one cannot become a year older until they have had a bowl of tteokguk. It’s not uncommon for children to ask for extra servings of the soup in hopes of becoming older more quickly. This custom is so widespread, in fact, that many Koreans often use the expression, “How many bowls of tteokguk have you eaten?” to ask a person’s age.

Whether you like it or not, all Koreans eat this. It’s the one thing that connects them. There are many other ways to measure a year — if not in bowls of your own specially designed tteok guk, then in the desire to join in.

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