Homemade mochi

I’ve had a project in mind for a while now that I finally tried out last week: making homemade mochi.  It’s a classic Japanese confection, but it never would have occurred to me to make it at home, until I saw it mentioned on a Japanese food blog, Umamitopia.

The traditional way of making mochi involves extensive physical labor, pounding the cooked rice until it’s smooth.  Alternatively, one can purchase a specialized machine.  For obvious reasons, neither of these options is appealing to me – I’d need to work out a lot more to be able to pound my own mochi, and if I could ever cram another appliance into my petite kitchen, it would be a sous vide machine, not a mochi maker.

The Umamitopia approach to mochi-making involves a bread machine, which I don’t have. But the idea of repurposing an existing appliance is a great one – and the Just Hungry blog has the perfect solution, the KitchenAid stand mixer.  If its motor is powerful enough to knead bread dough for long periods, after all, it can certainly handle some sticky rice.

Once I’d figured out the equipment side of things, it was time to work on ingredients. Mochi is made with special “sweet” rice – you cannot use regular Japanese rice (the sweet rice is on the left below, regular on the right). Fortunately, Mitsuwa sells small bags of sweet rice, as well as the toasted soybean powder known as kinako, which is the perfect coating for the finished mochi.

I made the sweet rice in just the same way as regular rice, except that I let it soak for a half hour before I started the rice cooker.  Once cooked, it went into the KitchenAid, fitted with the dough hook, where it mixed… and mixed… and mixed for about 15 or 20 minutes. Towards the end, the rice was smooth and very sticky, and the mixer was definitely working harder than usual – but it faithfully carried on.

Once the mochi is smooth and sticky, it’s ready to be rolled into balls and coated in some sort of topping – the kinako that I used (mixed with sugar to taste), cornstarch or potato starch, toasted black sesame seeds, or whatever strikes your fancy.  The toasty-sweet flavor and aroma of the kinako is my favorite.

These homemade mochi stay fairly soft, but if you want to keep them for more than a day, be sure to cover them well and refrigerate them.

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Mochi

1 1/2 cups sweet rice
1 1/2 cups water
6 tbsp kinako
3 tbsp sugar

Rinse rice thoroughly in cold water and drain about 15 minutes.

Put rice and water into rice cooker and leave to soak for 30 minutes.  Then turn on rice cooker and let it cook for its normal cycle.

As soon as rice is cooked, transfer into the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the dough hook and turn on medium speed.  After a few minutes, the rice will start to come together – no need to worry about scraping it down.  Keep an eye on the mixer and occasionally increase speed to high, but generally keep it at medium for 8-10 minutes.  After that, the rice will become stickier and harder to mix, so reduce speed to low (with occasional bursts to medium-high).

Mix for about 15-20 minutes in total, until smooth.

To form mochi into balls, first wet your hands with cold water – this will help prevent the rice from sticking.  Pull up a bit of rice and roll into a roughly golf ball-sized ball, and drop into the kinako mixture.  Beware, the rice will be very sticky, so you’ll probably be able to form only two or three mochi before you need to re-wet your hands.

When you have a few mochi in the kinako, roll around to lightly coat, and then place on a baking sheet.

Leave for a few hours, then roll each mochi in the kinako again.  Cover and refrigerate.

Makes ~2 and a half dozen small mochi