Cooking of Ssukttok

Cooking of Ssukttok

Koreans began to cook and eat ssukttok (rice-and-wormwood cake) a long time ago.

Wormwood, a perennial herb of the daisy family, contains 4.5 percent protein, 0.54 percent fat, 7.13 percent sugar, 6 percent minerals (more than 50 percent of them are potassium, and the rest are other microelements including calcium, iron and phosphorus.), plenty of vitamins A, C, B1, B2, D, PP and chlorophyll and cineol, essential oil that emanates a unique fragrance.

Koreans used the herb widely in cooking rice, noodle and soup and making kimchi. The plant was mostly used to make ssukttok. There are many sorts of the cake—ssuksongphyon (a half moon-shaped wormwood paste-mixed rice cake stuffed with beans), ssukgaephittok(a wormwood paste-mixed rice cake stuffed with bean jam), ssukjolphyon (a fancy wormwood paste-mixed rice cake), ssukchalttok (a glutinous wormwood paste-mixed rice cake) and ssuksolgittok (a steamed wormwood paste-mixed rice cake).

Methods of making ssukjolphyon and ssuksolgittok are introduced below.

Ssukjolphyon is made as follows:

Prepare 500 grams of white rice flour, 50 grams of wormwood leaves, 10 grams of sesame oil and 5 grams of salt.

Boil water mixed with the salt, knead the rice flour with the boiled water, and steam the dough in a pot. Parboil the herb leaves in boiling water and then leave them in cool water until their bitterness is removed. Squeeze water out of the leaves, and pound the leaves into paste. Mix the dough evenly with the paste and tear it into bite-size pieces. And mould each of the pieces into a round and flat one, then stamp them with patterns and spread the sesame oil on them to be served on a plate.

Ssuksolgittok is made as follows:

Prepare 300 grams of white rice flour, 80 grams of white glutinous rice flour, 50 grams of wormwood leaves, 30 grams of sugar and 5 grams of salt.

Parboil the herb leaves in boiling water, and then leave them in cool water until their bitterness is removed. Squeeze water out of the leaves, and chop up the leaves. Mix the flour and sugar evenly, and knead the dough with the boiled salt water. And mix the dough evenly with the chopped leaves and steam it in a pot. Next, let the steamed dough settle by its own heat, and then cut it into bite-size pieces to be served on a plate.