Rice Cake SoupTteokguk

Tteokguk is the first meal of the Korean new year. Every family eats it on Seollal — Lunar New Year morning — and the tradition carries weight. The oval rice cakes represent coins, symbolizing prosperity. Eating a bowl means gaining a year of age in the old Korean reckoning. You don't eat tteokguk casually on New Year's Day; it's the meal.

I made it abroad for the first time on Lunar New Year morning in London. I was living there for a contract and had no Korean family nearby. I found the sliced rice cakes at a Korean grocery, bought some beef broth to substitute for proper anchovy stock, and made it alone in my apartment.

The egg preparation is a step that gets skipped in simplified versions — you cook a thin omelette, let it cool, and cut it into thin strips to use as garnish. In the version I grew up with, these egg strips were always present. They're not just decoration. They add a soft, rich element that contrasts with the chewy rice cakes in the bowl.

What I almost got wrong was the rice cake timing. The recipe says 5-7 minutes after adding them to the boiling broth, and that window is important. Undercooked tteok are hard and unpleasant. Overcooked tteok dissolve and make the broth thick and starchy. At exactly 6 minutes the sliced ovals are tender all the way through but still hold their shape.

Eating that bowl alone in London, I felt the weight of the tradition in a way I hadn't when surrounded by family. Distance made it more significant. The coin-shaped rice cakes in a clear broth — it's a simple meal, but it carries a whole year inside it.