Food - Drink
Goguma Mallaengi: The Chewy Korean Sweet Potato Snack
By CLAIRE REDDEN
Dried fruit is sweet, chewy, and much richer in vitamins than candy, but it doesn’t always satisfy the taste buds. A better option is dried root veggies, which offer a more addictive balance of sweet, savory, and rich, and in the candy aisle of Korean grocery stores, you can find a delicious sweet potato snack called goguma mallaengi.
With a unique appeal to both gummi candy and sweet potato fans, goguma mallaengi is made by baking or steaming sweet potatoes and leaving them to cool before removing the skin and cutting them into bite-sized pieces. Then, the potatoes are placed in a dehydrator and dried for 12-16 hours, and are flipped once halfway through.
The roasting and steaming enhance the potatoes' sweetness, and the low dehydration method concentrates their flavor and dusts them with a naturally sweet powder released from their starches. Looks-wise, goguma mallaengi recalls a powdered donut, french fries, and Turkish Delight, with a texture that's both fudgy and stretchy.
There are many brands of goguma mallaengi to buy in stores or online, but you should check the nutrition label to see if your snack has added sugar, since this can negatively affect the natural sweetness of the product. Readymade goguma mallaengi can also be expensive in the U.S., so consider following a recipe to make your own.