Spicy Rice Cakes, Blood Sausage Fried Snacks — Korean Bunsik

It was on my walk home from work. Winter, so the sun had already set, and the wind coming out of the tube station was absolutely biting. I couldn't be bothered to cook a proper dinner, but my stomach was growling too loudly to just ignore it. I was wandering down a side street when I spotted a bunsik shop sign — one of those little Korean snack bars. Through the glass door I could see a pot of bright red spicy rice cakes, and before I'd even thought about it, my feet had already carried me inside.

When people think of Korean street food, they tend to jump straight to BBQ or fried chicken. But the snack that Koreans actually eat all the time is something else entirely. It's bunsik — a word that roughly translates to "flour-based food," but really just means casual, cheap, no-fuss Korean comfort food. Tteokbokki (spicy rice cakes), sundae (blood sausage), deep-fried bites, and fish cake soup. When you order all four together, Koreans call it tteoksuntwio — a mash-up of the first syllables of each dish. There are bunsik shops absolutely everywhere in Korea, as common as a Greggs on a British high street. Seoul, Busan, tiny rural villages — whether it's a chain or a tatty little place down a back alley, you'll find somewhere selling tteokbokki. And the price? You can order all four dishes and fill yourself up for around ₩10,000, roughly £5. Walk in alone, order the tteoksuntwio set, and that's your dinner sorted.

That's exactly what I did that evening. Sat down, ordered the set straight away. It was just me, but the portion was surprisingly big. I did wonder whether I'd manage to finish it all. Spoiler: I polished off every last drop of broth.

The Tteoksuntwio Set — the Classic Korean Snack Bar Spread

The tteoksuntwio set is the definitive Korean bunsik experience: four dishes served together on a red plastic tray. This particular one came from Jaws Tteokbokki, a bunsik chain with loads of branches across Korea. But this post isn't really a restaurant review — it's about bunsik culture as a whole, so I'll leave the shop talk there.

No matter which bunsik shop you walk into, the lineup is the same. Red tteokbokki, clear fish cake soup, a plate of blood sausage, and a basket of fried bits. I've eaten this in Daejeon — a major city about an hour and a half south of Seoul — and I've eaten it in Seoul itself. The only thing that differed was the tiniest nuance in flavour.

Tteokbokki — Chewy Rice Cakes Drowning in Red Sauce

Tteokbokki is the heart of any bunsik spread — plump, chewy rice cakes swimming in a sweet-and-spicy red sauce. I went for these first. The thick cylinders of rice cake were coated in that sticky, glistening sauce, and perched on top was a single crispy snack cracker. At first I thought it was a strange garnish, but once I dipped it into the sauce, the crunch mixed with the spicy-sweet coating was oddly addictive. Fair warning though: leave it sitting in the broth too long and it goes completely soggy. I made that mistake and ended up eating a floppy, sauce-drenched crisp. Not ideal.

Rice Cake vs Wheat Cake — What's the Difference?

The ones I had were rice cakes. In Korea, tteokbokki comes with one of two types of cake: rice-based or wheat-based.

These days, rice cake is the more popular choice. Personally though, I miss the wheat ones. When I was a kid, I'd scrape together about ₩1,000 — less than 50p — after school and head to the bunsik shop, where they always served the wheat version. Whether rice or wheat tastes better is one of those long-running debates in Korea, a bit like the chip shop curry sauce vs gravy argument over here. There's no right answer. It's just personal preference.

The Secret Behind Tteokbokki Sauce

The real star of tteokbokki is this thick, glossy red sauce. It's made from gochujang (Korean chilli paste) mixed with sugar, corn syrup, and soy sauce — so you get the sweetness and the heat at the same time. If you're worried about the spice, standard tteokbokki honestly isn't that hot. The sweetness hits you first, and the chilli warmth creeps in afterwards — more of a gentle tingle than a burn. And if you really can't handle any heat at all, there's jajang tteokbokki: a black bean sauce version that's dark, savoury, and not spicy in the slightest.

Then again, for those who love a proper kick, there's something at the other end of the scale.

I once ordered level 3. Couldn't even get through half of it and ended up just chugging fish cake broth to cool my mouth down. I haven't attempted a challenge since.

Fried Snacks — Dip Them in Tteokbokki Sauce and They Become Something Else Entirely

Korean bunsik fried snacks are a key part of the tteoksuntwio set — battered and deep-fried bites that range from dumplings to squid. After a few mouthfuls of tteokbokki, I moved on to the fries. This time it was half deep-fried dumplings, half battered squid. Korean bunsik frying is quite different from Japanese tempura. Tempura batter is thin and delicate; Korean batter is thick and crunchy. You bite through a properly crisp shell before hitting the filling inside.

You can eat them plain, and they're perfectly good on their own. But the Korean way is to dip them straight into the tteokbokki sauce. I'll be honest, the first time I didn't — it felt like a waste of that lovely crunch. Then I saw the person at the next table dunking theirs right in, so I copied them. Never looked back. The crispiness disappears, sure, but the sweet-spicy sauce soaks into the batter and it becomes a completely different thing. Totally worth it.

There Are Way More Types of Bunsik Fried Snacks Than You'd Think

At a street food stall, you'll see all of these lined up on a draining rack, sorted by type. You just point at whichever ones you want and they bag them up. Each piece costs somewhere between ₩500 and ₩1,000 — roughly 25p to 50p.

Gimmari — The Undisputed MVP of Bunsik Fried Snacks

Up close, you can really see how thick the batter is. The one with the green tinge peeking through is gimmari — the deep-fried seaweed glass noodle roll — and it's my absolute favourite among all bunsik fried snacks. Glass noodles are rolled up tightly in dried seaweed, then battered and fried. The outside shatters when you bite in, and the noodles inside stretch out all chewy and springy. Dunk it in the tteokbokki sauce and the crunch swaps out for a soft, spicy, saucy coating. If tteokbokki is the main character, gimmari is the one you genuinely can't do without.

Fish Cake Soup — The Clear Broth That Tames the Heat

Fish cake soup, known as eomuk-tang, is the quiet hero of any bunsik meal — a clear, savoury broth packed with skewered fish cakes that acts as a palate cleanser whenever the spice from the tteokbokki gets too much. The moment the heat started climbing, my hand reached straight for this. In Korea, fish cakes are also called odeng (from the Japanese word oden). They sit in a big pot of clear broth, and honestly, the broth is the real prize.

The stock is made from dried anchovies and kelp. Once the fish cakes simmer in it, they release their own savoury depth and the broth just gets richer and richer. In winter, one sip of this stuff and you feel it warm you right through. I've actually tried to recreate it at home — bought the anchovies, the kelp, the exact same fish cakes. It never tastes the same. I reckon it's because in a bunsik shop, that pot simmers from morning till closing time. There's a depth you get from twelve hours of gentle cooking that you simply can't replicate in thirty minutes on your own hob.

Different Fish Cake Shapes, Different Ways to Eat Them

The fish cakes come in all sorts of shapes — flat squares, tightly rolled tubes, little round balls. The flat ones soak up loads of broth, and the rolled ones trap hot soup inside the folds, so when you bite into one, a burst of scalding stock comes out. One tip if you're trying these for the first time: don't take a massive bite out of a rolled fish cake. The broth inside is boiling hot and you'll burn the roof of your mouth. I speak from painful experience.

Sundae — Korea's Take on Blood Sausage

Sundae is Korea's version of blood sausage — pork intestine stuffed with glass noodles, vegetables, and pig's blood, then steamed. It arrived sliced into rounds, with bits of liver and offal on the side and a small dish of salt mixed with chilli powder for dipping. That salt-and-chilli dip is the classic way to eat sundae.

If "sausage made with blood" makes you flinch, think of it this way: we've got black pudding right here in Britain. Same concept, different filling. The Spanish have morcilla, the French have boudin noir. Korean sundae is the same family, but with glass noodles packed inside, it's chewier, lighter, and milder than its European cousins.

Personally, I prefer dipping sundae in the tteokbokki sauce rather than the salt. The salt brings out the natural flavour of the sausage itself, while the tteokbokki sauce wraps it in a sweet-spicy kick — it's a completely different experience. Try both and see which side you land on.

Bunsik Shop Sundae vs Handmade Market Sundae

This isn't handmade sundae, to be clear. The stuff you get at bunsik shops is almost always factory-produced. Handmade sundae is what you find at traditional markets — the filling is rougher, the thickness varies, and the taste is noticeably different. But honestly? Alongside tteokbokki in a bunsik shop, the factory version does the job perfectly well.

The liver and offal on the side are definitely a love-it-or-hate-it situation. If you're into it, you'd feel short-changed without it. If you're not, you won't touch it. If offal isn't your thing, just say "busok ppae-juseyo" when you order — they'll leave it out and give you a bit of extra sundae instead. I quite like the liver, but I tend to leave the intestine bits.

One Piece at a Time

Fish cake, stabbed with a toothpick and eaten in one go. Sundae, held up to show the cross-section — glass noodles packed in tight. Squid fritter, with pale tentacles poking out from between the batter. Picking things up one by one is half the fun of bunsik. Forget chopstick elegance — this is toothpick-and-fingers territory, and that's exactly the vibe a bunsik shop calls for.

Bunsik Is Just… Everyday Life

Bunsik isn't something you book a table for. It's not somewhere you dress up to go. It's just always there, on some corner of whatever neighbourhood you happen to be in, and when you're hungry, you walk in. That's it.

But this humble, no-frills food runs surprisingly deep for Koreans. Pooling coins with your mates after school to share a plate of spicy rice cakes. Warming your hands on a cup of fish cake broth from a street stall in the dead of winter. Sitting alone in a bunsik shop after a long shift at the office, quietly working your way through a plate of sundae. Bunsik isn't just food — it's tied to all these little moments.

That's how it was for me that evening. I'd wandered into a bunsik shop on a whim on my way home, demolished the entire tteoksuntwio set by myself, and walked out full and oddly cheerful. That's the thing about bunsik. You go in for no particular reason, eat more than you planned to, and leave in a better mood than when you arrived.

If you ever visit Korea, do yourself a favour and pop into a bunsik shop at least once. And whatever you do, drink the fish cake broth. That's the real thing.

This post was originally published on https://hi-jsb.blog.