Sliced Rice Cakes

Sliced rice cakes (tteokguktteok) are the essential ingredient of tteokguk, the soup eaten on Lunar New Year morning (Seollal) throughout Korea. The Donguibogam classifies rice — from which these cakes are made — as neutral in nature and sweet in flavor, tonifying the spleen and stomach. The tradition of eating tteokguk on New Year's Day dates back centuries, and the act of eating it symbolically adds one year to your age — hence the Korean expression 'Have you eaten your tteokguk?' as a way of asking someone's age. The oval coin-like shape of the sliced rice cakes represents wishes for prosperity in the new year. Making tteok from freshly harvested rice was historically a communal activity, and the chewy, dense texture of properly made tteokguktteok is a textural experience central to Korean food culture.