Dalgona Coffee: What It Is, Where It Came From, & Why What You’re Making, Isn’t It!

When you could just make a cup of coffee in less than five minutes, why not spend the next twenty to thirty making dalgona coffee? While Koreans know what dalgona is and where it started, most foreigners don’t despite the challenge’s viral success.

I was recently invited out to a cafe in Seoul that makes legit dalgona coffee based off of real Korean dalgona and, surprise!, it is NOT what you’re making at home. They wanted to get the word out about dalgona and asked me to help. Spoiler: The coffee you’re whipping is actually based off an Indian coffee drink, not Korean at all. Mind blown? Yeah, let’s get into it and see how this happened.

Feel free to skip around a bit:

• What Is Dalgona?
• What Is Dalgona Coffee?
• Where Did The Term ‘Dalgona Coffee’ Come From Then?
• Where To Try Real Dalgona Coffee
• How To Make The Internet Trending Dalgona Coffee

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What Is Dalgona?

Dalgona (달고나), real dalgona, is a Korean street food that is believed to have first appeared in Korea in the 1960’s in Busan, the second largest city in the country. The treat is sweet and has been translated to honeycomb toffee, something that South Africans might be more familiar with. It tastes a bit like butterscotch but has a peanut brittle like feeling.

This kind of food exists all around the world but is known by many different names like sponge candy in New York and Pennsylvania, cinder toffee in Britain, angel food candy in Wisconsin, sea foam in California and Maine, and karume-yaki in Japan. You can actually make your own Korean style Dalgona at home if you want to try. There’s a dalgona kit on Amazon if you want to try to make the original dalgona candy at home. You can see the kit below.

If you’ve been in Korea, you’ll know that this is exactly what the street food dalgona makers use as well. If you are or have been here, do stop and try their sweet and crunchy treat. In Korea, it’s often made by older women or grandmothers seated on the ground or very close to it as they expertly melt the sugar and add a dash of baking soda to get it to rise and make that crunch. After that, they put it into cutesy shapes as it hardens for passerby to enjoy.

The sugary concoction usually spills over the edge of the cut out and some of the vendors will even play a little game with the little people you’ve got with you to see if they can crack off the edges without breaking the shape. If they can, they might even get a free candy to go. There is clearly a trick to it.. but I don’t know it. You can spot these vendors in various places around the city of Seoul. I’ve often seen them in the popular Myeongdong shopping district and the Insadong cultural district.

Want to make your own traditional dalgona? Here’s the recipe provided by Cafe Cha:

Tools: Korean dalgona cutter kit, pan, parchment paper, scraper, metal press, cookie cutters, wooden chopsticks

Ingredients: 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 pinch of baking soda

1. Melt sugar in the pan over low fire, adjusting height in order not to burn it.
2. Once melted, add baking soda and whip it with a pair of chopsticks until it becomes thick and foamy.
3. Pour onto the parchment paper and put the metal press on top to flatten into a circle.
4. Before it hardens, press a shape into the surface with the cookie cutters and attach a lollipop stick.

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What Is Dalgona Coffee?

Dalgona coffee is a whipped coffee beverage made with instant coffee, sugar, water, and milk. When I first heard about it, I thought it made so much sense for Koreans. Instant coffee is everywhere. There are instant coffee machines at restaurants so that when you depart after a meal, you can get a little Dixie cup of instant coffee to go and there in subway stations so you can get a big gulp before the next train arrives.

When I first saw the viral challenge I assumed someone thought they’d try making instant coffee good and came up with this since they had a lot of free time on their hands. It didn’t look especially appealing but I gave it a try after having legit real Dalgona coffee just to compare the two.

What you need to know, however, is that what has been named ‘dalgona coffee’ by Internet fiends, is actually ‘beaten coffee’ that is a common Indian coffee beverage. Named ‘beaten coffee’ in India because of the process of beating the instant coffee and sugar to aerate the mixture over and over again. The only difference is that often the paste-like substance is put in the glass first and then warm milk is poured over top of it. If you’ve already tried the dalgona challenge… now you want to try it again this way, don’t you?

You can watch the video below by Sharmilaz Kitchen from back in 2016 where she shares how to make the Indian cappuccino. Spoiler: It’s EXACTLY the same! Much like one of my English professors taught us in college though, once everyone agrees on a name for something, it is what it is. If we all decided to start calling tables ‘apples’ suddenly, well then tables would be apples. So, I guess beaten coffee from India is going to be known as dalgona coffee from Korea from now on because hundreds of thousands of people online have deemed it so. Feel free to debate in the comments.

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Where Did The Term ‘Dalgona Coffee’ Come From Then?

The current viral trend is not really dalgona coffee… and again, I’ll get into that in a bit, but was given the moniker after a famous actor mentioned the similar taste. The craze sweeping Tik Tok and Instagram began when Jung Il Woo, a Korean actor you might recognize from Unstoppable High Kick, 49 Days, Cool Guys, Hot Ramen, Cinderella with Four Knights, and Moon Embracing the Sun went to Macau and tried a whipped coffee based on the Indian drink called Phenti Hui or Indian cappuchino.

After having the beverage, he came back to Korea, went on the show Stars’ Top Recipe at Fun-Staurant and talked about this whipped coffee drink he had and how it reminded him of dalgona, a common street food in Korea. Thus the name was born and the rest is history. So, NOW there are two dalgona coffees, this viral challenge sweeping the internet under the hashtag #dalgonacoffeechallenge that is really based off of the coffee drink from India mentioned above and an actual dalgona coffee that has existed for some time and was created by a cafe in Seongsu-dong, the Brooklyn of Seoul.

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Where To Try REAL Dalgona Coffee

Before the craze of dalgona coffee took Tik Tok by storm, there was in fact a cafe named ㅊa, which means ‘tea’ in Korean so the cafe is ‘Cafe Tea’ or ‘Cafe Cha’, that was making dalgona milk tea and coffee drinks. They claim to be the only dalgona based brand in Korea and though they couldn’t be happier about the dalgona challenge, they want to remind people what dalgona really is. While Koreans definitely know what dalgona is, most foreigners probably don’t and because of this challenge may be thinking it’s the whipped coffee and sugar. It is not!

The masterminds behind Cafe Tea which was established in 2019 wanted to take the premium milk teas and flavors made famous in Taiwan and to reintroduce them with a Korean dessert fusion. Dalgona, the Korean street food, is the star ingredient in their milk teas, coffees and desserts and has been highlighted across the menu.

I am always intrigued and drawn to places, spaces, and products where younger Koreans have taken something that is older, traditional, and maybe has gone out of fashion and brought it back! When I first came to Korea, Hanboks were out of fashion in a big way and then younger designers started coming in and modernizing them while still appreciating the history and design. Designers like Leesle have really taken the traditional fashion and made it hip and popular for everyone again. This dalgona based brand is much like that for me.

Dalgona is something that is on tons of street corners, but isn’t especially chic or appealing these days and could easily disappear with time. While my husband and many people his age remember eating the sweet treat fondly and may cause them to reminisce fondly of their childhoods, children these days are drawn to the colorful candy treats in convenience stores instead. This cafe definitely caters to my husband’s generation, but it is a lovely way to introduce dalgona to people a bit younger in the cafe scene and even children as well.

I got to sit down with cafe founder Kenny Hong to learn about his inspiration and how his cafe came to be. He has created some really innovative recipes and has definitely created an Instagrammable foodie sensation and cafe with a very “Seoul-ful” touch as he puts it. Cafe Cha features traditional dalgona which you can watch being expertly made behind the cement counter in the modern industrial space as well as soft scones that have been topped with the dalgona mixture. Want to introduce your children to traditional dalgona? Do it with a dalgona topped scone. Now that’s a treat.

The signature drinks are actually the dalgona milk teas which use crushed assam black tea leaves which are subjected to high temperatures in a special teaspresso machine. Did you guys know teaspresso machines are a thing? I didn’t! The tea that is extracted this way is richly flavored and is then combined with milk and crushed dalgona. The crushed dalgona on top actually melts over time so patrons are encouraged to chat and wait five to ten minutes before sipping to watch as the dalgona melts on top and sweetens the drink.

We tried the dalgona coffee, dalgona assam milk tea, dalgona olong milk tea, dalgona pudding, and the dalgona scone and I appreciated them all honestly. Each features dalgona in various strengths. For me, I think I liked the Dalgona Assam Milk Tea the best, the one featured here to the right. The dalgona melted into the drink and gave it a hint of caramel-like topping that sweetened as I sipped. It had the taste of dalgona but in good proportion with the drink itself.

The dalgona coffee was the strongest one and in that vein is similar to what is being whipped  up at home. It is strong! The pudding was delightfully light and a good little parfait next to the drinks. I really liked the fluffiness and softness of the scone with the crispier shell of dalgona on top as well. A little soft and crunch in one mouthful.

I absolutely think that anyone that is IN Seoul and jumping on that dalgona coffee hashtag trend should then proceed to Cafe Cha to see what real dalgona is and how to appreciate it in coffee, milk tea, or dessert form. It’s delightful and a beautiful ode to a street food in Korea that could have been on the way out, but won’t be as long as Cafe Cha has anything to say about it.

• Address: 2 Seoul Forest 6-gil, Seongdong-gu, Seoul (서울 성동구 서울숲6길 2)
• Hours: Every day: 10:00am ~ 10:00pm
• Cost: W5,000
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cha_seongsu/

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How To Make The Internet Trending ‘Dalgona Coffee’

I made a little video showing how to make the viral trending dalgona coffee because well, we’re social distancing and isolating like heck right now so what better thing is there to do with my time than spend 30 minutes whipping up a coffee drink and another 30 minutes splicing a video to go along with it?

Ingredients

• 2 Tablespoons Instant Coffee (Do NOT use ground coffee beans, it will NOT work!)
• 2 Tablespoons Sugar (I used brown sugar)
• 2 Tablespoons Hot Water
• Milk

1. Put the instant coffee, sugar, and hot water in a bowl.
2. Mix ravenously. I used a hand whisk and while some people say it took them five minutes, I very much don’t believe that at all. It took me at least 10 minutes with vigorous whisking.
3. Once it’s whipped, grab a glass and fill it half way… or more, with milk. This is strong I have to say, so if you’re not good with a lot of coffee, get more milk.
4. Take the whipped coffee mixture and put it on top of the milk and voila, it’s done. Drink it up.

Thoughts

I found the drink to be very bitter and really strong. 2 Tablespoons of instant coffee was actually EIGHT helpings of Kona instant coffee, so it is STRONG. I couldn’t finish the glass and neither could my husband because it was just too strong for us. If you LOVE coffee, you might be okay. Otherwise, it might give you espresso whiplash. In comparison to the dalgona coffee and dalgona milk tea I had just had at Cafe Cha earlier in the day, I can definitely say I prefer their concoction better than the Internet sensation.

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