Korean Rice Cakes (Tteok) substitute

Best substitute

Potato gnocchi

Use the same amount by weight as the korean rice cakes (tteok) you are replacing

Best for tteokbokki

Taste and texture differ

Potato gnocchi is the closest thing most kitchens can actually get, at roughly 1:1 by weight, and it works genuinely well in tteokbokki sauce even though it is softer and less bouncy. Sliced Chinese rice cakes (nian gao) are nearly identical if you can find them, and thick udon noodles make an excellent rabokki-style version. If you have plain short-grain rice flour, you can make real tteok from scratch in about 20 minutes.

Other korean rice cakes (tteok) substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Sliced Chinese rice cakes (nian gao)
Close match
Use the same amount
Oval slices of pressed rice cake sold refrigerated or frozen in Chinese grocers, made from the same kind of non-glutinous short-grain rice.
What changes
Best for
tteokbokki, stir-fried rice cakes, tteokguk-style soups
Functionally the same product in a different shape, and the closest swap on this list by a wide margin. The slices are thinner than garaetteok cylinders so they soften in about 4 minutes instead of 8, and they soak up sauce faster, which means the sauce ends up slightly thicker. Chewiness and flavor are right.
3Homemade tteok from rice flour
Close match
1 cup non-glutinous rice flour plus ½ to ⅔ cup boiling water and ¼ teaspoon salt makes roughly 2 servings
Real tteok, made by scalding plain rice flour with boiling water, kneading it into a smooth dough, steaming or microwaving it, then kneading again and rolling into logs.
What changes
Best for
tteokbokki, any recipe calling for garaetteok
The only substitute that actually is tteok. Use plain rice flour, not glutinous or sweet rice flour, or you will get sticky mochi instead of springy rice cake. Knead the hot dough hard for a few minutes with an oiled hand, since that pounding is what develops the chew. Homemade tteok is a little softer than store-bought and is best used the same day.
4Thick udon noodles
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by weight
Fat, slippery wheat noodles, usually sold pre-cooked in vacuum packs.
What changes
Best for
tteokbokki sauce as a noodle dish, rabokki, quick weeknight version
Not a rice cake at all, but a genuinely good dish. Udon has real chew and clings to gochujang sauce beautifully, and Koreans already combine noodles with tteokbokki, so this reads as a variation rather than a failure. What you lose is the substantial bite-sized dumpling quality, so the whole thing eats faster and lighter. Add them in the last 2 minutes only.
5Japanese kirimochi or mochi cakes
Different texture
Use 1 cake cut into 4 to 6 pieces for every serving
Blocks of pounded glutinous rice, sold dried and shelf-stable in Japanese groceries.
What changes
Best for
cheese tteokbokki, adding stretchy chew to a small portion
Made from glutinous rice, so it behaves completely differently: it goes soft, then stretchy, then it melts and glues everything together. Cut it into small cubes and add it in the final minute off the heat, or you will end up with a single mass. Some people prefer it in cheese tteokbokki for exactly that stretch, but it is not a shape-holding substitute.
6Gnocchi-style dumplings from mashed potato and flour
Taste and texture differ
makes enough for 2 from 1 large baked potato plus about ½ cup flour
A from-scratch fallback when nothing rice-based is available: stiff mashed potato bound with flour, rolled into short logs and boiled.
What changes
Best for
tteokbokki when no rice flour or rice cakes are available
Make the dough drier and stiffer than you would for Italian gnocchi, using more flour, because you want density rather than fluff. Roll into short cylinders the size of a garaetteok slice. This gets you the right shape and enough substance to carry sauce, but the flavor is unmistakably potato and the chew is soft, not springy.

What is Korean Rice Cakes (Tteok)?

Korean Rice Cakes (Tteok) is Tteok are Korean rice cakes made by steaming and pounding short-grain rice flour into a dense, springy dough, sold either as finger-thick cylinders called garaetteok for tteokbokki or as thin ovals for tteokguk soup.

Cooking tips

The whole point of tteok is a very particular springy, bouncy chew that Koreans describe as jjolgit-jjolgit. No non-rice substitute reproduces it, so decide up front whether you are chasing that texture, in which case make tteok from rice flour or buy Chinese rice cakes, or just want a good bowl of spicy saucy carbs, in which case gnocchi or udon is fine and fast.
Refrigerated or frozen tteok is hard as a rock out of the pack. Soak it in warm water for 10 to 20 minutes first so the cakes soften evenly, then simmer in the sauce. Skipping the soak is why the outside goes gummy while the center is still chalky.
Every substitute here goes from perfect to mush faster than real tteok does. Real garaetteok tolerates 8 to 10 minutes in bubbling sauce; gnocchi tolerates about 3, and udon about 2. Add the substitute at the end, not the beginning, and build the sauce first.
Rice cakes and all of these swaps release starch, which is what thickens tteokbokki sauce into that glossy coating. If you use gnocchi, which sheds less, the sauce may stay thin. Simmer it a couple of minutes longer before adding the dumplings, or slurry in half a teaspoon of cornstarch.
Never buy sweet rice flour, glutinous rice flour or mochiko when you plan to make tteok. Those are ground from a different rice and set into sticky mochi rather than firm rice cake. The bag you want says only rice flour, ideally milled from short-grain rice.

Frequently asked questions

Is gnocchi really a good substitute for tteok?

It is the best widely available one, and the dish it makes is genuinely good, but it is not the same. Tteok is dense and springy and holds its shape through a long simmer. Gnocchi is soft and pillowy, tastes faintly of potato, and turns to paste if you leave it in the sauce. Use it, boil it a minute short, and add it at the very end.

What is the difference between garaetteok, tteokbokki tteok and tteokguk tteok?

They are the same dough in different shapes. Garaetteok is the long cylinder; cut into short lengths it is what people label tteokbokki rice cakes, sometimes sold as topokki. Tteokguk tteok is the same cylinder sliced thin on the diagonal for soup. You can substitute one shape for the other freely, just adjust cooking time, since thin slices soften in about a third of the time.

Can I just leave the rice cakes out of tteokbokki?

Not really, because in tteokbokki the rice cakes are the dish rather than an ingredient in it. What you would have left is a pan of gochujang sauce. If you have no rice cakes and no substitute, the better move is to use the sauce on something else entirely, such as noodles, boiled potatoes or cabbage, and call it what it is.

Can I use regular sticky rice or mochi instead?

Cooked sticky rice will simply dissolve into the sauce, so no. Mochi or Japanese kirimochi will work in the sense that it is edible and chewy, but because it is made from glutinous rice it stretches and melts rather than holding a firm shape, so it tends to glue the pan together. Cut it small and add it in the last minute if you go that route.

What job is tteok doing in the recipe?

Three jobs. It supplies the starch and bulk that make the dish a meal, it provides a distinctive chewy texture that is the main sensory pleasure of tteokbokki, and its surface starch thickens the sauce into a glaze as it simmers. Its own flavor is almost neutral, which is the point: it is a carrier for gochujang. Any substitute that gives you body, some chew, and a bit of starch to thicken the sauce will make a good dish.

Related substitutes

More grains & starches substitutes

Korean Rice Cakes (Tteok) substitute

Other korean rice cakes (tteok) substitutes

2Sliced Chinese rice cakes (nian gao)

3Homemade tteok from rice flour

4Thick udon noodles

5Japanese kirimochi or mochi cakes

6Gnocchi-style dumplings from mashed potato and flour