Eomuk — Korean fish cakes

Eomuk (어묵) is the Korean name for fish cake. Wikipedia says it is mainly made of Alaska pollock or golden threadfin bream, with salt, sugar, flour and starch, and sometimes onion, carrot or scallion. It is also called odeng, a loanword from Japanese oden.

The paste is usually deep-fried, which gives the cakes their golden surface.

It is mild, a little sweet and springy. Cooks boil it in eomuk-tang (fish cake soup) or eomuk-jeongol (hot pot), stir-fry it as eomuk-bokkeum, or add it to stews. On the street it is sold boiled on a skewer in broth, and the broth is often drunk from a paper cup.

On K for All, it goes into our Tteokbokki, and our Gimbap recipe stir-fries fish cake strips for about 2 minutes with 1 tsp soy sauce, ½ tsp sugar and ½ tsp sesame oil.

Look at the ingredient list: brands where fish comes first usually taste better than those padded with starch. Fish cakes are commonly sold frozen or refrigerated, so check the package; frozen ones can be kept in the freezer for a few months, and after thawing they should be cooked soon.

We could not find a frozen or refrigerated Korean fish cake that ships from Amazon, so there is no product link on this page. Look in the frozen section of a Korean grocery.