(lighthearted folk music) - Greetings, my beautiful lovelies. It's Emmy. How are you? It's great to see you, and welcome back. Today, we are going to be making mochi. If you're not familiar with mochi, mochi is sticky rice that's been pounded to make this really great chewy dough. It's used in sweet applications, most often filled with
sweetened red bean paste. It is delicious, savory as well. Actually, my favorite way to have it, I like it wrapped in a
little bit of seaweed and then dipped in some soy sauce. Absolutely stinkin' smantastic. So if you're in Japan around the New Year, you'll see lots of mochi
and people enjoying mochi. It's a traditional food
of that time of year, particularly kagami mochi,
which has a beautiful shape. It's composed of two, kind of,
chubby discs of white mochi. They're stacked on top of each other. You'll often see an orange on top. Directly translated, it means mirror mochi and is given as an offering, and it is eaten during the New Year. Now, during the New Year in Japan, people do not do any work. You do lots of work beforehand
in preparation for New Year. You clean your house. You make lots of food to eat
during osechi, or the New Year. But it is considered rude and somewhat bad luck to do any action during the first few days of the new year. Families gather together,
they watch television, they eat the food that
you've prepared beforehand, and it's a great time of
year, and you eat mochi. And when we lived there, there
was always a warning saying, particularly towards older people, to be careful not to choke on mochi because the rice is glutinous rice. It is sticky, and then it's pounded, and it has a really great
stretchy, chewy texture, and it can be difficult to swallow. So every year, there are warnings warning particularly older people not to choke on their mochi. And sadly, people do die every year from eating New Year mochi. And on that grim note, today
we're gonna be making mochi using my Tiger mochi maker. This is my beautiful Tiger mochi maker. I have used it in a previous video before. I'll put a link down below to
it in case you are curious. I made the anko, or sweetened
bean paste, version with this. Today we're going to
be making a kirimochi, which is a mochi where
you make the mochi dough, and then you roll it out,
allow it to cool, cut it, and then you toast it. And it does the most wonderful thing. It puffs up like the
Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, just like marshmallow, but it takes on this really
great, nutty, toasted flavor. It's my favorite way to have mochi. Then you dip it in some soy
sauce and have it with seaweed. It is one of my favorite breakfasts. Love it. So in celebration of New Year,
I'm gonna make some today. So since the last time
I used my mochi maker, it has seen some hard times. See this? So sad. So we had some work done in the basement and one of the workers toppled
this over, and it broke. But because this is
wonderful, wonderful quality and craftsmanship, I was
able to reorder a new lid, which went missing. And I also had to order
a new impeller blade, which also went missing. So shout-out to Tiger for
making great quality products with appliances with replaceable parts. I love that. So let me show you how to make
mochi with the mochi machine. Some of you may be thinking,
why do you need a unitasker, a machine that only does
one thing for making mochi? Well, traditionally, it is
a very laborious process. You cook your rice till it's
nice and cooked and soft, and then you have to
pound it, traditionally, with these great big wooden
mallets in a big mortar. Two people have to do it. Usually, someone folds the rice
while the other one pounds. And it is a lot of work. And so we're gonna use the
machine to knead our cooked rice into our beautiful chewy mochi dough. So that's why you need a unitasker. So here is our machine. And I love that it's
got very simple buttons. It seems very analog, right? So that's our power
button, steam, and pound. And here is our lid, which
also serves as a dish. We'll use that later. A wooden rolling pin to
help us roll the dough. A lid. And this is the cooking basket. (parts clattering) It comes with a measuring
cup and a blade for kneading. It also comes with another
blade for making miso, which I would love to do at some point. But so down here is the spindle
where the impeller attaches, but this is also where the water goes. So this is the rice I'll be using today. This is special sweet glutinous rice. You must use this type of mochi rice. Otherwise, your mochi
won't be sticky and chewy. It is special because it is short-grained. So if you look at it,
it's very kind of round and ovate rather than kind of long. And it is sticky when cooked. I'm using this brand. This is by Koda Farms. This is grown in the US. It's Sho-Chiku-Bai, great sticky rice by a longstanding rice-growing family. So last night, I measured
seven rice cooker cups of rice and washed thoroughly, and
then let it soak overnight. That's really important for sticky rice. It's important that it hydrates, so that when it steams,
it steams nice and softly and there are no hard bits in the middle. So that's what I have here. I have my soaked rice, and
then I've got it in a colander, draining any excess water. So now we're going to add 400 milliliters of water directly into the bottom of this. Then we're gonna add our basket. (basket clattering) And this is an important step. Don't forget to put the impeller blade. I've done that before
after I put in the rice, and then I had to dump it. You know, it's a problem. So put your blade in like that. Now we'll add our drained
rice into the basket. (rice rattling) So what I love about this
machine is that it both cooks it and pounds it, or kneads it. (bowl clattering) So now we're going to just
flatten it out so it's even. Now we're gonna place the lid on. (lid thumps) Now we're gonna push the steam button. (button clicking) There we go. Light is on. So this will take about
35 minutes to steam, and the buzzer will go off. It has a very analog-sounding buzzer. It goes kind of meh. It kinda just drones
on and on, not a beep. It's not very pleasant, but
it tells you when it is ready. Then we'll push the pound button, and then it will churn it and knead it. And we'll knead it for about 10 minutes. And then our mochi dough will be ready, so we can use it for
any application we like. But this time, we're
gonna be making kirimochi. All righty, my lovelies, I will see you in about half an hour
once the rice is cooked. All righty, see you in a little bit. (mochi maker buzzing) (giggles) See? All right, I guess it's ready. (laughs) See what I mean? Terrible analog buzzing sound, but definitely tells you when it's done. Okay, so the steaming part is done. Let me show you what the rice looks like. ♪ Dun da na na ♪ Look at that. Beautifully cooked rice. Look at that. That beautiful? Steamy and hot. So now we are going to knead
this into our mochi dough, and we simply do that by
pushing this button right here. This is the pound button. Ready? Boom.
(button clicks) (mochi maker rumbling) And look what happens. (laughs) Isn't that great? It's shaking the entire counter here. But that little blade in the bottom, which they call the impeller, is turning. And then that pounds the
rice into a sticky paste, sticky, chewy paste. We want it to be smooth and
very chewy and stretchy. Look at that. Isn't that cool? Oh, I gotta see it from this side. It's like it's alive. I'm gonna let this go
for about 10 minutes, and when it's shiny and smooth and round, we can move on to the next step. All righty, see you in a little bit. (mellow jazz music) All righty, my lovelies,
we are ready to move on to the next step of making our kirimochi. So I've got some heat gloves here, (items thumping) and gonna take our basket out. (basket thumps) Thank you for your service, Mr. Machine. And I'm gonna dampen
this just a little bit. (water splashing)
(dish tapping) Now we're gonna dump our
mochi right into the lid. And because this is non-stick,
it should just come out. It should. (bowl clattering) It should. And if it doesn't, we can coax it out. Here we go. (dish clattering) Look at that. (mochi squelches) (chuckles) Very cool. Make sure we take out
our plastic impeller. This is really hot, so. But I can just get a good grip on it. Look how stretchy it is. Isn't it amazing? I once made a vegan faux
mozzarella cheese using mochi, and it worked great. The flavor, of course, didn't
taste like mozzarella cheese, but the stretchy behavior, quite similar. Okay. So look how sticky that is. Isn't that amazing that
this is just rice, right? This is freshly made mochi, and we can shape these
into little dumplings. We can eat this right away. But what I wanna make is kirimochi, and that requires it to
be cooled and then cut. So I'm gonna take a plastic bag. (bag rustling) This is a gallon size. And I'm gonna turn it inside out. (bag rustling) I'm gonna place the mochi in the bag. (bag rustling) Oops. (bag rustling) Pretty sticky. Doing my best to get it into the bag. (utensil thumps) There we go. Very sticky stuff. And hot. (bag rustling) But I can manage it, I think,
without burning myself. Okay. Okay. So now the hot mochi dough is in there. And I'm gonna zip this up, and
we're gonna remove some air, and we wanna flatten this out. So zip this up, but leave
a little bit of an opening so that the air can escape as we press it. Now we're going to work this
just like we would work putty, or slime, or Play-Doh, and we're just gonna mush it into a layer. And this is where we can
use the provided rolling pin and roll it into the corners. And what I have found is that sometimes you get
an air bubble in the corners and it won't wanna get into the corners. So that point, we take a little knife and we might have to prick
a hole in the corner, like that, like that,
(plastic popping) just so that we can force
the dough into the corners. So this is the time to manipulate it, because as the rice cools, it will stiffen and it will not go to the
places that you want it to. So this is the time to shape it. All right. Now we need to make sure it's zipped up so that the mochi doesn't dry out. So now we're gonna let this
cool to room temperature, and then you can chill it. And then we can move on to
the next step, which is this. (items clattering) This is the mochi completely cooled.
(palm smacking) And look how rigid it is. (mochi thumping) Hard and stiff and ready to be cut. So next, we're gonna cut our kirimochi. I should mention, if you
don't have a mochi maker or want to go through the
whole process of making mochi, you can buy kirimochi
already at this stage, already cut for you. It comes in little blocks
that are individually wrapped. I'll put a link to it down below. I've purchased it from Amazon before. But it saves you a lot of work. You can keep 'em in your pantry. They're shelf-stable. After this step of cutting
it, I like to bag it up and put it in the freezer and
then take it out as I need it. I can take it directly out of the freezer and place it in the toaster. It's ready to go. So yeah, you can still have
kirimochi without making it. So I'm just gonna cut it into about... Let's see, this is like 1 1/2-inch strips. And I just cut it right
through the plastic. Feel free to take it out
of the bag if you like, but I found that this is a
really easy way to do it. Just cut it all the way through. (plastic pops) (knife scrapes) And it's pretty tough to cut through. Maybe it's easier to cut this way. Okay. (knife thumps) All right. (knife clanging) So remember, we have plastic on here, so now we're going to remove
that before we eat it. Next, we're gonna cut
it into little blocks. (knife thumping) So when you buy it at the supermarket, it'll be individually wrapped,
and they're about this size. I like to cut it even
further into smaller pieces so that each serving
is kind of bite-sized. So you can cut it even smaller, like this. (knife clatters) Remove the plastic. So this is one of my kids'
favoritest little treats. So I keep a bag of these in the freezer and they can make this
snack for themselves. They just take out how many
blocks they want, toast them up, and have them as an afterschool snack. So delicious. So I think that's good for now. And now what we're gonna
do is get a baking tray. I have a little bit of parchment paper, but you can do it without parchment paper. And place our little mochi
squares on the paper. And then we're gonna toast
it for four to six minutes in your toaster oven, or you can place it
underneath your broiler if you don't have a toaster oven. But that's all you need to do. Oh, or if you have an air
fryer, that works great, too. So I'm gonna make a big batch of those. Don't they look great? Watch what happens. Okay, so I'm gonna pop
these into my toaster oven and toast four to six
minutes or until they puff up and get golden and toasty. And then we'll finally give
our homemade kirimochi a taste. All righty, see you in a little bit. (mellow music)
(patrons chattering) All righty, lovelies, now our kirimochi are
finally ready to be eaten. Look at them. Aren't they magical? Isn't that so cool how
they poof up like that? I always love watching them
right before they kind of pop. It's like they're alive. It's just so much fun. All right, and now it is time to eat them. You can dip these in shoyu,
which is just soy sauce, but I prefer tsuyu. Tsuyu is just soup base. It's got a little bit more
mm, mlem, mlem for me, so this is what I like. Look at this little cat dish. Love it. So look what happens
when you add a little bit of soy sauce or tsuyu to it. How cute is that? See little kitty appear? Okay. So now you can take your fingers.... (utensils clattering) These are really hot, so
I'm gonna use chopsticks. But let me show you what it looks like. Look at that. So there is some of the part that's gooey, but this part is hard. (chopsticks tapping) Can you hear that? That has the original kind of cube shape, and this is the hot
molten mochi beneath it. Isn't that magical? Who thought of this? (chopsticks tapping) So now we dip that into
here, a little shoyu, then I love to wrap it
in a little bit of nori. All righty, here we go. Happy New Year. Itadakimasu! (food crunching) Mm. So good, so, so good. This expanded part right here is crunchy, and light, and thin, right? So you get a little bit of crunch. But this part is sticky and chewy. It has a marvelous texture. And it's hot. And by itself, very plain, but has a wonderful texture. Just so chewy and bouncy
with little crisp edges. But then dipped in sauce
and wrapped in nori, it just becomes something
so utterly fantastic. (food crunching) Mm. (hands clapping) So good. The tsuyu adds a savory, salty component that's a little bit briny and soy-based. It complements the seaweed so well. And the crisp, light, paper-light texture of the nori goes so well
with the crispy edges of the kirimochi. So good. But my... Yeah, it's that combination of textures, the chewy and the crispy, (nori crunches) salty, flaky. (nori crunches) Mm, so good. So you can still make
fresh mochi from rice without a mochi maker. You would steam your
rice, just like I did, in a bamboo steamer, soak it first, and then you would have to pound it. You can use a mortar and pestle. You'd need a large one. I don't think a food processor
would have enough torque, but I would imagine a
strong KitchenAid mixer might be able to do it with a dough hook. Don't quote me on that, but
I imagine if you google it, you might find something
that would approximate that. Another option if you want
to make the filled mochis, the kind that have ice cream in them or sweet red bean paste inside
them, you can use mochiko, which is rice flour, mochi rice flour. So it's pulverized rice
flour, and you can use that and add water and knead it into a dough, so you don't have to use the whole grain. Both of them are fun and accessible, but this one is my favorite. And as I said, you can still buy kirimochi from the grocery store. Mm-hmm. Mm, so good. ♪ Mm, hmm, hmm ♪ Mm. Particularly good if you need
something gluten-free, too. Oh, man. Problem is you just
can't stop eating them. (nori crunches) So stinkin' delicious. All righty, my lovelies, Happy
Holidays, Happy New Year. I hope you enjoyed that one. I hope you learned something. Please share this video with your friends. Follow me on social media,
like this video, subscribe, and I shall see you in the next one. Toodaloo, take care, bye. (upbeat strings music) (gasps) Just one more. Okay. Look. ♪ Mm, mm, hmm, hmm, mm-hmm ♪ ♪ Mm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm ♪ Mm.
