My hotteok recipe is finally here! Hotteok is a VERY popular Korean street food. It’s a golden fried “pancake” filled with a gooey brown sugar syrup and sometimes nuts or seeds.

My mom made hotteok at home quite often when I was a kid. I’m pretty sure it is her favorite sweet snack, because she made it A LOT. I remember going to church and telling all the kids that MY umma made the best hotteok and that one day I was gonna learn how to make them too!

What is hotteok?

Hotteok is a fried yeasted dough with a brown sugar filling and sometimes nuts/seeds. It is known for being incredibly light & crisp while also being pleasantly chewy like mochi.

The filling is a mix brown sugar, cinnamon, and sometimes nuts and/or seeds. My favorite kind of hotteok is the one with sunflower seeds! The street vendors sometimes serve the hotteok in a cup, cut the pancake in half, and add more nuts/seeds inside if you want.

Ingredients:

• Dough
  • All purpose flour
  • Sweet rice flour
  • Active dry yeast
  • Sugar
  • Sea salt
  • Neutral oil
• Filling
  • Brown sugar
  • Cinnamon
  • Sunflower seeds
• Oil for frying

I highly recommend using the sweet rice flour for this recipe. It is a key ingredient. However, if you cannot find it, you can just use a total of 2 cups of all purpose flour.

Sweet rice flour is available in most American supermarkets, either in the Asian aisle or the baking aisle. Look for a rectangular white box that says “Mochiko” on it.

If you’ve exhausted all your options on finding sweet rice flour, you can also order it from Amazon here.

I recommend this at the last resort because it is expensive in my opinion.

FYI, sweet rice flour and glutinous rice flour are the same thing!

Tips for making the BEST hotteok:

• Shallow fry the hotteok! Most street vendors shallow or deep fry their hotteok and it will get you the best results. You want the dough to be lightly crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. No need to cover the pan to melt the sugar on the inside- just make sure you have enough oil to shallow fry.
• Use sweet rice flour- if you don’t have any sweet rice flour, you can just use all purpose flour but I highly recommend getting some sweet rice flour. It will give add a mochi-like texture to the dough which is what we want!
• Weigh the dough- if you have a scale, I recommend weighing the dough balls once you have separated them to make sure they are even.
• Enjoy right away- once fried, these can be saved to eat later but they are best when freshly made. Over time, the dough will soak up the brown sugar and it won’t be as good in my opinion. My husband, however, prefers them this way for some reason.
• Tilt the fry pan- when frying the hotteok, tilt the pan to one side so that the oil pools and you can fry the edges of the hotteok. This will give you a crispier edge and help to melt the sugar.

Variations:

In the last decade or two, street vendors have gotten very creative with food and started creating all kinds of variations of just about everything. Hotteok is a great example- the original hotteok is a pancake filled with brown sugar and sometimes nuts/seeds. But now you can find plenty of street vendors that make different types of hotteok. Here is a small list of the most common kinds:

• Cheese
• Japchae
• Veggies
• Red bean
• Kimchi

You can also add to the original hotteok any toppings you like, and one of my favorite ways to have hotteok is to add a scoop of ice cream, fold the pancake in half and eat as a hotteok ice cream sandwich! Seriously so good.

You can purchase the silicone pastry mat I used from Amazon here.