Happy New Year means Mochi Time

The Japanese have a tradition of making mochi during the New Year. I’m sure you’ve seen the plastic bags of harden white discs or bricks of mochi in the asian supermarkets. I knew the slimmer round discs ones were usually used in Ozoni soup but always wondered what other applications it could have. Then I came across the mention of yakimochi (btw, yakimochi in Japanese also means jealousy) and got curious. Yaki means cooked in Japanese and well, mochi is glutinous rice that’s had the crap pounded out of it till it resembles a sticky dough. There are a few ways to make it: toaster oven, robata grill, or pan. I opted for pan because I don’t have access to a robata grill and sitting on my butt and watching the mochi through the toaster oven door seemed boring. Firstly, pick up a package of mochi. It can be the brick type or the disc type, up to you.

I picked up this one because it was the cheapest one on sale with moderate sized discs for single serving. I thought the package name was cute. Usagi. Rabbit. Rabbit pounding mochi. :p

Just to give you an idea of how big each of the discs were, I put it next to my camera lens cap, this is the cap for the 50mm kit lens I think. Set your burner to slightly below medium. Let the pan warm up a little then put the mochi in. Its not necessary to add oil or anything to coat the pan. Though I’m not sure about pans that aren’t non-stick.

Flip the mochi when the top starts to crack and flake a bit. Personally I used chopsticks to do my flipping, spatula should work okay but its more surface area touching the mochi and may get a little sticky.

The first and then the second flips. You can see how its starting to puff up. Don’t be too impatient, let each side sit on the pan for a little bit. I think I may have let each side sit for about three to four minutes.

At one point or another soon after the first or second flip, you’re going to suddenly hear your mochi go, ‘pffft’. Its the outer skin splitting because the mochi or hot air is expanding inside. There’s probably a term for this but for my purposes, I call it ‘pffft’s. The left pic shows it right after it has ‘pffft’ and the right pic shows it expanding thereafter.

After the 3rd flip you can see how much bigger and rounder it got since its original form. I think normally the mochi breaks out a bit and oozes a bit to expand. It could be that I’m cooking these on low heat so it doesn’t blow up as much but as you can see from the right picture, one of them decided to ‘let go’.

I’m not sure how many times I flipped or rolled them around by the time I took the left picture and honestly I wasn’t sure when these were ready but I figured when they were golden brown and puffed up enough that they no longer looked like its original disc, it should be ready. Plus I figure if the inside was still hard and raw then I could always stick it back in the toaster oven to finish off. The right picture shows it dished up.

For the sauce, I used shoyu (Japanese for soy sauce, not pictured), mirin (Japanese sweet cooking sauce), and katsuo mirin furikake. The furikake was optional, just something I had in my cabinet. Amount of each sauce that you put in is about a tablespoon or so to your taste. I just usually eyeball it and splash in some. Doesn’t take a lot of sauce really. For dad, I usually put in less mirin so it isn’t as sweet.

Best to eat these when they’re warm so the mochi retains its happy stickiness. They tasted like giant arare crackers with soft gooey insides. Other sauces or topping can be used with these and I haven’t figure out which are the good ones. Suggestions would be happily received. I’m not sure if its because of my low heat cooking method but the outer skin of these yakimochi were chewy and crispy. A higher heat may give you a thinner skin, not to mention fun mutant shapes. Give this snack a try, its so simple.

Happy New Year!