Market Souvenir · Millet Rice Cake
Omegi-tteok
Photo: 3hrAgency / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
It began as a brewing ingredient: the cakes were broken up and fermented to make omegi-sul, Jeju's millet liquor, long before they were sold as a snack in their own right.
Chewy balls of dough made from cha-jo, a black glutinous millet grown on Jeju's volcanic soil, are steamed and rolled in sweetened red bean powder. Markets across the island sell it as the definitive Jeju souvenir snack.
Why it's made this way: Rice paddies never took hold on Jeju's volcanic ground, so millet became the island's staple grain instead, and this rice cake — traditionally the base mashed into omegi-sul, Jeju's millet liquor — grew into a signature marker of the island's distinct farming history.
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