Why not start this whimsical blog on an absolutely abhorrent note? It is 3:36 AM, and I have to complain.
I was minding my own business today, sacrificing braincells to the healthy, youthful urge to stay awake past any hour that is reasonable. Depending on your perspective, it can even be a noble deed; someone has to be standing guard when the Skinwalkers come. I was terribly hungry, but charged with a clarity of mind more suited to a well-rested individual in the morning, so I was feeling adventurous. There has been a recipe I've been seeing all over my FYP since before the meteorites unionized against the dinosaurs. It looks simple, easy and delicious! Why not give it a shot?
The recipe that I was so confident would make for an excellent past-midnight snack was Rice Paper Tteottbokki. I had a reel already saved from a while ago. I followed the instructions precisely. Soak rice paper, roll into strips, cut up with scissors. It looked wonky and more flat than tubular, but this is an immaterial difference to me, since presentation hardly matters when there's only five inches of free space on our dining table at any given point.
Next, some strips were cut up to be wrapped around string cheese. Alright. I was willing to sacrifice two sticks of my precious string cheese. The next step, which was truly my undoing, and exactly as the reel dictated, was to use soy sauce and any stock of your choice. Only a 'splash' of water, but this is optional. I should have known better. I am better than this. Or perhaps my sleeping habits have killed off more braincells than I realise. Soy sauce is salty.
Soy sauce...was the base for the tteottbokki 'broth'.
Not water. Not water with gochujang, which, mind you, I actually had at home.
Soy sauce.
I followed this diabolical recipe exactly as the influencer instructed. It looked wonky, but there were no red flags from the smell or the general vibes. I thought it had worked out.
Do I have any right to be surprised that the misshapen, now rectangular tteottbokki soaked to the very core in salty soy sauce tasted like moss you would find at the bottom of the Dead Sea? No, probably not. I'm not even kidding, eating this felt like self-inflicted torture. This is probably what they fed the King's most hated prisoners in medieval times. I don't think the hollowed pit of Chernobyl's Reactor 4 could spit out something this vile.
In the end, the worst part of this story is that this was not the first time I was conned into cooking something truly evil by Instagram recipe influencers. It was not even the first time the recipe involved rice paper. There is a lesson to take away from this. I hope, by putting this near-death experience out there in the wide web, I have influenced you in some capacity- NEVER trust recipes you see on Instagram reels. No matter how effortless they look, or how delicious the influencer promises their dish is, do not take this risk unless you're prepared to become a victim.