Asia → North Korea → Pyongyang
🥙 LUNCH
Injo-gogi-bap
Sheets of soybean 'meat' stuffed with rice and topped with a spicy sauce, a resourceful North Korean street food.
North Korean · easy · serves 4
prep 20 min · cook 15 min · plus 30 min hands-off time
~306 cal · 5g protein · 55g carbs · 8g fat · 1g fiber · 8g sugars · 1g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Injo-gogi-bap, artificial meat rice, is a distinctive North Korean street food born of hardship and ingenuity during the country's difficult years. Injo-gogi, artificial meat, is made from the defatted soybean meal left over after pressing oil, pressed into chewy sheets, a way of stretching scarce protein.
The soy sheets are folded or rolled around a filling of seasoned rice, then topped with a fiery red sauce of gochujang, garlic, and chili. Sold from market stalls, it turns a humble by-product into something savoury, spicy, and satisfying, and has become an emblem of North Korean everyday resourcefulness. Chewy, spicy, and filling, it is street food with a story.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian, vegan and dairy-, egg-, nut- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 4
- 12 soybean 'meat' sheets (dried soy protein sheets)Hard to find? dried tofu skin (yuba) sheets, soaked - the standard stand-in outside Korea; silkier and less chewy than the pressed soy sheets the dish was invented around
- 3 cups cooked rice
- 1/3 cup gochujang (chili paste)
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 3 , chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tbsp chili flakes and sugar
- 2 tbsp sesame oil
Instructions
- 1Soak the dried soy sheets in water for about half an hour, until soft and pliable, then squeeze the water out.✎ Chef’s noteInjokogi is the cake left after the oil has been pressed from soybeans, rolled into a flattened hollow tube and coiled into a belt to dry. In North Korean markets it is sold by the kilo or by the metre and cut to length in front of you, and it is best when it has not dried out entirely.
- 2Season the warm rice with a little sesame oil and salt.✎ Chef’s noteSqueeze the rehydrated soy sheets well before filling; too wet and they tear and will not hold the rice.
- 3Wrap or fold each soy sheet around a portion of rice.
- 4Fry the onion, scallion and garlic in a little oil until soft, then stir in the gochujang, soy sauce, chili flakes and sugar and cook it a minute or two into a thick sauce. Spoon it over the pouches to serve.✎ Chef’s noteNearly all the flavour of this dish is in the sauce, so build it properly: fry the aromatics first rather than simply stirring everything together cold. Injo-gogi-bap came out of the famine years of the mid-1990s, when injokogi was one of the few reliable sources of protein, and the filled pouches are still sold from street stalls as a kind of national fast food.
North Korean street-food tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Pyongyang. Buckwheat grows where rice will not, which is why the north built a noodle around it. The dough carries a high proportion of buckwheat and almost no gluten, so it is pressed through a die straight into boiling water rather than rolled and cut, and it comes out chewy and slightly grey.
🗺️
North Korea. North Korean cuisine shares Korea's fermentation heritage but leans milder and more austere, cold buckwheat noodles (naengmyeon), corn and potato dishes, and hearty stews. Pyongyang's cold noodles are its most famous export.
🌍
Asia. Fermentation is the thread that runs the whole way across: soy sauce and miso, Korean doenjang and kimchi, Southeast Asian fish sauces, the soured batter behind an idli. Chilli is the newcomer among them, arriving only after 1500 with Portuguese and Spanish traders, which makes the heat in Sichuan, Thai and Korean cooking far younger than the fermenting underneath it.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from North Korea
Pyongyang NaengmyeonChewy buckwheat noodles in an icy, clear beef-and-radish broth, topped with pear, egg, and pickles.
OnbanA Pyongyang bowl of warm rice in chicken broth topped with shredded chicken and a mung-bean pancake.
Gangnaengi-tteokChewy steamed corn cakes lightly sweetened and often dotted with beans, a homely North Korean treat.
Browse all North Korea recipes →
Good to know
Storing it: Cool leftover rice quickly and refrigerate within an hour. Keep up to 2 days and reheat until piping hot all the way through.
Make it a North Korea meal
SujeonggwaDrink
Gangnaengi-tteokDessert
Pyongyang NaengmyeonDinner
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Frequently asked questions
What is Injo-gogi-bap?
Sheets of soybean 'meat' stuffed with rice and topped with a spicy sauce, a resourceful North Korean street food.
Where does Injo-gogi-bap come from?
Injo-gogi-bap is a North Korean dish from Pyongyang, North Korea.
Can Injo-gogi-bap be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Injo-gogi-bap recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions. Treat the substitutions as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Injo-gogi-bap safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we still count coconut as a tree nut to be cautious, although the FDA stopped listing it as one in 2025), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Injo-gogi-bap take to make?
About 1 h 5 min in all: 20 minutes prep and 15 minutes cooking, plus 30 min of hands-off waiting the method needs, serving 4.
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