Today, I will show you how to make an ingredient for Korean cooking - sticky rice cakes. They are commonly used for tteokbokki, tteokggochi, and tteokguk. Many people cannot find these sticky rice cakes where they live, so they want to make tteokbokki and tteokguk at home. With this recipe, you can make sticky rice cakes at home and enjoy tteokbokki and tteokguk.
Short Korean Lesson:
- Tteok (떡) = Sticky Rice Cakes
- HuSik (후식) = Desserts
Main Ingredients
- 3 Cups Rice Flour
- 1½ Cups Water
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1½ Cups Water + 1 tsp Sesame Oil
Directions
For the steaming process, filled almost half of a pan with water and boil it on high.
Meanwhile, combine 3 cups of rice flour and 1 tsp of salt.
Slowly add 1½ cups of water, stirring it gently.
The rice flour will be crumbly.
Prepare a wet cheesecloth. Place the cheese cloth in a steamer.
Add the rice flour on top of the cheesecloth.
Once the water starts to boil, steam the rice flour for about 20 minutes on high.
In a bowl, add 1½ cups of cold water and 1 tsp of sesame oil. If you don’t like sesame oil, you can use normal cooking oil instead.
After 20 minutes, the rice flour will be cooked.
Wear cotton gloves before placing the plastic gloves over your hands. This will help prevent your hands from becoming burnt. The dough will be hot!
Use a bread machine to knead the dough. I used the pizza dough setting for 25 minutes. It is very important to knead the dough thoroughly for the gluten to fully develop and become sticky, so I do not recommend taking any shortcuts with this step. =P
If you don’t have a bread machine, you can make the sticky rice cakes with 1½ cups of rice flour and 1½ cups of sweet rice flour instead of 3 cups of rice flour. Hand-knead the dough for at about 10 minutes. Rice cakes made this way will be inferior to using a machine; hand-kneading does not make a good texture for the rice cakes.
When you handle the dough, cover your hands and the board with a little oil and water so that the dough will not stick to things. Take some of the dough and round it. Roll it on a board with your hands until it becomes about half an inch in diameter.
For tteokbokki or tteokggochi, cut it into 2 inch pieces.
For tteokguk tteok, roll the dough into a 1 inch diameter, and leave it at room temperature for one day before you cut it.
If you put some water on your knife, it makes it easier to cut. After waiting one day, slice it diagonally into ¼ inch pieces.
Put the rice cakes in freezer bags and store them in the freezer.
