I’m a lover of rice cake. I think it’s influenced by my grandma. She loved anything chewy and she loved rice cake. While I can find rice cake at my local Asian Grocery store or Korean supermarket, there is something so satisfying making it at home. I feel a sense of accomplishment making something that I can usually buy. Best of all, this rice cake is really simple to make and all you really need is a steamer, no other fancy machinery.
What is rice cake made out of?
Typically a rice cake is made with soaked rice cooked in a steamer then pounded. The type of rice depends on the texture you want. A medium grain rice/calrose rice (regular rice flour) will give less chewiness and breaks more easily where short grain rice (glutinous rice flour) has a more sticky texture and stretches.
When we add glutinous rice flour to the regular rice flour, the rice cake will have a bit of chew to it. However, don’t add too much glutinous rice flour or else it will become very sticky and hard to work with.
Ingredients
There are only 4 ingredients to make rice cake: rice flour, glutinous rice flour, water and some salt. An option is also to add a bit of sugar. If we are making them completely by hand, you would need to soak the rice overnight and blend it. Then you would have to sift it then add all the ingredients together. Instead you can get rice flour in Asian supermarkets and just mix all the ingredients together.
How to make it
First mix rice flour, glutinous rice flour, salt and water in a bowl and form a dough. Then put the dough into a steamer (make sure to line your steamer) for about 20 minutes.
Then take the dough out, let it cool slightly (don’t cool all the way or it becomes hard) and add some oil or melted butter. Pound the dough with a muddler or a uniform rolling pin. The dough will become stretchy and you can stretch it with your hands. Once the rice dough becomes shiny and stretchy as you pull apart, then the rice cake is done.
The next step is to shape the rice cake. You can roll the rice cake into thin logs and cut them so it’s shaped like Korean rice cake for Tteokbokki. Alternatively, you can also shape it to large logs and slice them. The sliced rice cake can be used in stir fry as well.
To store it, I would suggest using a damp paper towel and cover the top to prevent drying out or you can freeze it in a ziploc bag.
Pro tip
- When making rice cake make sure you are using more of the regular rice flour NOT the glutinous rice flour. I made that mistake and it came out super sticky.
- Sift your rice flour so it gets evenly coated with water and the rice dough cooks evenly.
- Add the oil when the dough is hot and also pound the dough to absorb it, this way the rice dough will be soft.
- Once the dough has been pounded you can knead dough. The more you knead the rice dough the chewy it will become. If it becomes too hard use a dough hook on standing mixer.
- Knead until the dough is shiny.
- Wear gloves for this to help with the heat also with the stickiness.
Homemade rice cake
Equipment
- steamer
Ingredients
- 1 cup rice flour
- ¼ tsp salt
- ½ cup glutinous rice flour
- ⅔ cup water
- 1 tbsp neutral oil or melted butter
Instructions
- Sift the rice flour and add salt.
- Start to add water slowly. Mix while adding water. Add enough until the rice flour forms into a dough
- Knead the rice flour dough either with hand or with a fork.
- Add enough water until the rice flour forms a dough that you can pick up with your hands. The dough will be slightly wet but it will stick together.
- Take the dough, spread it thin onto a steamer towel or a silicone mat and place into a steamer.
- Put it over pot of cold water, turn on the heat on high and steam for 25-30 minutes
- Once steamed, take out the dough into a bowl. Be careful it's hot
- Add in the oil or butter. Use a muddler or rolling pin to mix the dough with the oil.
- Once the oil is absorbed into the rice dough, you can start to knead the dough with your hands. Wear a pair of gloves to knead.
- Knead until the dough is shiny and can pull without breaking.
- Shape into small or large logs. Or cut into slices.
- Put damp paper towel over rice cake to prevent drying out. You can also freeze your rice cake until you are ready to eat.
- One way to eat it is to pan fry it and dip it in some sugar and toasted sesame (white or black).
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