/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>8989221
If you're gonna explain something like this, at least double check things.

Mochi does not normally have added sugar. It is basically steamed (ie FULLY cooked), rice mashed, kneeded, and pounded into an elastic, sticky paste. You use a special type of highly glutenous rice that can develop a natural sweetness due to the high starch content, but it is mostly a neutral flavor profile until the mochi is covered/filled/stewed, etc in whatever floats your boat.

You don't have to, but you usually DO want to cook mochi unless you eat the stuff fresh. After a day or so, it gets really stiff and dry so you need to do something to it unless you like the texture of old pencil eraser. Grilled mochi gets you a great contrast between crispy grilled bits and gooey molten mochi on the inside. Dust that with soybean flour and sugar (or cinnamon and sugar for you less adventurous gaijin) and you've got yourself a wonderful desert. Likewise, grill that shit and dunk it into a savory soup/sauce and you've got a wonderfully satisfying side-dish (see korean spicy mochi).

What you are thinking about is another type of rice dish, probably something like chichi-dango or kibi-dango. These, and similar dishes, DO have sweeteners mixed into the rice "dough" but are often made with rice flour (and potato, yam, etc) rather than steamed rice. Daifuku are closer to the filled mochi deserts you were mentioning, which can be filled with whatever the fuck you want. Besides traditional sweetened bean paste (red, azuki, lima whatever) you got chocolate, strawberry, vanilla cream blah blah blah.

Other than that, good on ya for trying to educate people.

7.6/10