Korean Sweet Potato Cheese Sticks

Korean sweet potatoes are one of the Korean vegetables that I want you to try whether you like normal sweet potatoes or not. They are naturally very sweet, have a nice texture, and are healthy. Among Korean sweet potatoes, there are 2 main kinds. One is a water sweet potato called MulGoGuMa in Korean. It’s soft and mushy texture is pretty similar to the normal sweet potatoes that you find in America. It is just a lot sweeter and has good sweet potato flavor in it. The other type is chestnut sweet potato called BamGoGuMa in Korean. This one is also very sweet and has good sweet potato flavor. The only difference is that it’s texture is firm and not mushy like mulgoguma. It’s texture is a little similar to chestnuts, so it must have gotten the name because of that. Anyway, both kinds are good to try, but I especially love bamgoguma and that is the one we will use for today’s recipe. Instead of making the same old cheese sticks, make this upgraded version of it with tasty Korean sweet potato paste.

Yield: 12 Pieces

Short Korean Lesson

• SilSu (실수) = Mistake
• SilPae (실패) = Failure

Video Instructions

Main Ingredients:

• 1½ Cups Cooked Korean Sweet Potatoes
• 6 Mozzarella Sticks
• 1 Cup Korean Bread Crumbs
• ¼ Cup All Purpose Flour
• 1 Egg
• 2 Tbsp Whipping Cream or Milk 1 Tbsp Sugar
• 1 Tbsp Salted Butter
• ⅛ tsp Salt

Directions

Get about 2 small size sweet potatoes (about 12 oz). It is important to get bamgoguma as I briefly mentioned in the description. Wash them good.

Then, I will steam them in my pressure cooker. It is nice to use this metal steamer. Put the steamer in your pressure cooker or pot and pour some water in it. Place the sweet potatoes in the steamer and close the lid. It took about 20 minutes for me to finish cooking my sweet potatoes with this pressure cooker. It takes over 45 minutes when you steam them in a pot.

20 minutes later, I poked the cooked sweet potatoes with a fork, if the fork goes in smoothly like this, they are done.

Peel the skin off the sweet potatoes and mash them with a potato masher or a fork.

Add about 2 Tbsp of whipping cream or milk, 1 Tbsp sugar, 1 Tbsp salted butter, and ⅛ tsp salt to the sweet potato. This is a little tricky. If you have mulgoguma, which will be soft and mushy, you need to skip the whipping cream and milk.

The whipping cream is used to not only give good flavor, but also to make the firm and stiff mashed potatoes (in this case bamgoguma) softer. Mix everything well.

Divide the sweet potatoes into 12 portions.

Prepare 6 mozzarella sticks. Some kid’s snack mozzarella sticks have less salt. Cut the cheese in half. Btw, now they look like Korean sticky rice cakes for tteokbooki. Don’t you think so? lol

To get nice crispy cheese sticks, we need these 3 ingredients: ¼ cup all-purpose flour, 1 beaten egg, and 1 cup of Korean bread crumbs in a separate bowl.

Before working on the sweet potato paste, get a generous amount of flour on your hands and a cutting board.

Take a portion of the sweet potato paste. Put some flour on the surface and flatten it in your hand like this. When it becomes slightly bigger than the cheese stick, put one piece of cheese in the center.

Wrap the sweet potato around the cheese and seal it well. Make sure that all the cheese is covered evenly with the sweet potato paste, or the cheese might come out later when you fry it.

Coat the sweet potato covered cheese with some flour.

Cover it with egg next.

Finally, coat it with bread crumbs. Gently press it so that it will get a lot of bread crumbs on it.

Use the same process for the rest of the cheese sticks. When you have about half of them done, start to preheat the cooking oil to deep frying them on medium-high.

I will fry half of the cheese sticks. In every few seconds, roll them around so that they will cook evenly.

It will take about 3 minutes of frying before they are nicely golden brown.

 

Serve the sweet potato cheese sticks with either pizza sauce or ketchup. The sweet and creamy paste along with the melted salty cheese and crispy bread crumps make this food so amazing. Try it someday.