Squid Game Dalgona Challenge: Everyone has been going crazy for dalgona (based on the Korean word dalguna (달고나) that roughly translates to “it’s sweet”), the hard, sugary candy featured in one of the challenges in the popular Netflix series Squid Game. The caramelly honeycomb toffee, often imprinted with fun shapes, is a South Korean street food staple, but it’s finally gaining international attention.
While the game, like the candy, may appear simple at first, the contestants quickly realize that this popular snack is more difficult to extract than it appears, making it one of the most inventive challenges on the way to winning the big cash prize.
What is the dalgona candy challenge in Squid Game?
The challenge involves players attempting to carve a design or shape, such as a circle, triangle, or umbrella into a piece of dalgona, a popular Korean street food treat.
Winners advance to the next challenge in a series of childhood games.
Anyone who even slightly cracks the candy, however, is shot dead by the soldiers.
Fans of the show are now taking on the dalgona challenge for real, albeit without the fatal ending for the losers, sparking a craze on the internet and social media.
“The production crew and I would joke about our series starting a dalgona craze, similar to how Netflix‘s Kingdom did with the gat, a traditional Korean hat,” Squid Game creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk told The Korea Times.
Fans of the hit show have been reenacting scenes from the show, taking on the challenge, and sharing recipes.
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Things To Know About Dalgona Candy
It’s A Well-Known Street Food
Wander the streets of Seoul, South Korea, and you’ll see dalgona vendors on every corner, each with a small burner, a ladle, and the simple ingredients used to make dalgona for children looking for a quick sugary snack (just like Sang-childhood woo’s flashback on the playground).
Dalgona is a favorite among kids not only because of its smokey caramel flavor, but also because of the fun shapes stamped into it. Different vendors will find their own distinct way of stamping the dalgona they serve, some of which will be easier to extract than others!
This is not a new candy
While dalgona is currently popular due to Squid Game’s harrowing and fantastic third episode, the sweet itself is not new. Dalgona has been in South Korea for decades, beginning in the 1970s and 1980s when it was a cheap and quick way to enjoy a tasty treat.
It’s now a “retro” candy that’s it’s trend in recent years, and after the explosive success of Squid Game, it’s a Tik-Tok challenge and YouTube cooking tutorials.
It Has Its Own Game
Dalgona is a.k.a ppopgi, which is also the name of the game which children who eat it play. If they can extract the fun shape in the candy without breaking it, street vendors will occasionally give them small toy prizes. This can mean that children will go through a lot of dalgona in order to win.
The dalgona game from Squid Game is one of the most difficult in the series, with contestants having only ten minutes to cut out the shape in the cookie. It can range from a relatively simple triangle to a much more complex umbrella, and they kill them if their candy cracks even slightly.
The Show’s Candymaker Sold Over 200 Pieces Per Day
According to Yahoo, An Yong-hui, the candymaker responsible for the candies featured in Squid Game, was unable to meet demand for the treats after the series premiered in September. Normally, he would make 200 candies per day, but after that, demand tripled.
With a daily demand for hundreds of dalgona, the candy seller didn’t leave his shop for a week, devoting all of his time to creating the umbrellas, stars, circles, and triangles featured in the series.
It’s A Simple Recipe
One of the reasons dalgona is so popular is that it is quick to prepare and uses ingredients that most people already have on hand. Its main ingredient is sugar, which is melted until caramelized on the stove, and when the right amount of baking soda is added, the resulting reaction produces an airy, crispy candy that is both beautiful to look at and delicious to eat.
After taking it off the heat, it’s usually ladled onto parchment paper to cool before being broken up into chunks by hand or, for an easy on-the-go snack, with a stick placed into it while it hardens.
It’s Difficult Tik-Tok Challenge
Anyone attempting to cut out the fun shapes stamped into dalgona, as in Squid Game, will find it difficult. Even tracing the point of a star with a toothpick, needle, or other thin tool becomes extremely difficult. That’s why Sang-deception woo’s at the start of the game, which caught his friends off guard, was one of the worst things he did in Squid Game.
The “dalgona challenge” has swept Tik-Tok, with users attempting to recreate the series’ competition. When they fail, a video of a red guard with a machine gun flashes across the screen, indicating their “elimination.”
The Cast Is Unable To Complete The Challenge
According to the cast, breaking out the shape is nearly impossible due to the brittle nature of the sugar. But thanks to having performed the stressful sequence in the third episode, they learned a few tricks, including the one that Seong Gi-hun uses to release his incredibly complicated umbrella.
In a Men’s Health challenge, four members of the Squid Game cast (including Wi Ha-jun as officer Hwang Jun-ho, Kim Joo-yreong as Han Mi-nyeo, Jung HoYeon as Jang Sae-byeok, and Anupam Tripath as Ali Abdul) attempted to cut out their shapes while discussing the process of filming the dalgona challenge episode, demonstrating how difficult it is.
You Can Find it All Over The World
Dalgona may be popular in South Korea, but you can find variations all over the world. In New Zealand, sugar and baking soda is combine with a small amount of corn syrup to make “hokey pokey,” a honeycomb treat that is thicker than dalgona and cut into cubes. One can purchase at fairs in Hungary as “Turkish honey.”
When covered in chocolate, it becomes the Crunchie bar in the United Kingdom or the Violet Crumble in Australia. You can customize in a variety of ways to reflect the country or region where the crunchy, caramelly snack is popular.
It’s Occasionally A Coffee
Prior to the candy craze, the internet was all about the dalgona coffee. You can make by combining instant coffee mix, sugar, and hot water until it forms a whipped mixture that can be dolloped onto hot or cold milk.
The whipped, caramel-colored topping floating on the drink looks and tastes similar to the dalgona cookie, but to add crunch, crumbs of biscuits or sugar crystals can be sprinkled on top.
