(knife hitting chopping board)
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- Hi everybody!
Today, let's make something special,
A Korean cooking ingredient, rice syrup.
In Korean, Ssal-jocheong.
Are you curious about how to make Korean rice syrup?
How many times have I told you "Oh, add rice syrup."
"Why does Maangchi love rice syrup?"
Because it makes food kind of shiny
and also it's less sweet than sugar.
Koreans have been using this rice syrup
for centuries and centuries.
Before sugar came to Korea, our ancestors used this.
You can make it at home.
All you need is only two ingredients,
rice and barley malt powder.
I will show you how to make this
from the beginning to the end.
So, I made in advance,
made with five cups of rice.
This is rice syrup, you see.
Hmm, (chuckles) wow!
I love this.
Home-made rice syrup is very special
because it's really really tasty.
So, I just made this
in advance to show you what it looks like.
Let's get started.
With 5 cups of rice, a little more than 1 kilogram.
we make 3 1/2 cup rice syrup.
Cool, isn't it?
First, let's wash.
(tap water running)
Wash like this.
(tap water running).
Rinse and drain, rinse and drain a couple of times
until the water runs very clear.
Now the water is very clear.
And pour out water as much as you can.
Okay, this is enough.
Add 5 cups of water.
And then cover.
I'm going to soak this rice for 1 hour.
One hour passed.
See?
Rice is just white, kind of opaque
and turn on the heat.
Over medium high heat.
I cook this for 12 minutes,
Stir this with my wooden spoon.
And, turn down the heat to low.
Then I'm going to simmer for ten minutes over low heat.
This is one of my cookbook recipes
Actually I have two versions
to make rice syrup.
First one uses a heavy pot.
Second one is just using a rice cooker.
If you have a rice cooker with a warm function
then you can make this rice syrup so easily.
But the reason I use this method
is that it's a more traditional way, besides
I can also make more, a larger amount.
Okay, rice is well done.
I will turn off,
very hot.
And then, this is 8 cups of water.
Add 8 cups of water.
This is a little burnt, but it's okay.
Really hot rice and 8 cups of cold water.
What do you think this temperature will be like?
It's going to be a little
hot, but not too hot.
Around 140 Fahrenheit.
This is my barley malt powder.
Let's add 2 cups.
One,
two
and then mix.
Mix together, you see,
really thick stuff.
Let's see what's the temperature?
Okay, around 140 Fahrenheit.
There is no heat now, but this is very hot,
140 Fahrenheit, but I'm going to let this sit here
for 1 hour.
After 1 hour passes,
the temperature is going down
then I'm going to turn it up again and stir.
We've got to ferment this
so we got to maintain the temperature around
between 120 to 140 Fahrenheit,
less than 150 F.
If this is boiling,
the enzyme is going to all get killed
so that we cannot ferment the rice.
So ferment for 6 hours or 7 hours
until everything's nicely liquified.
This powder, when I taste,
nothing, nothing sweet,
but this barley malt has an enzyme called amylase.
This enzyme converts this starch into kind of sweet thing.
This is so amazing!
Just mixing together,
fermenting, and hours later,
it tastes really really sweet.
So, I fermented it for 1 hour.
Look at this.
See it's really thicker.
Thicker and
there's not much liquid, right?
So now you see? It's around 133 Fahrenheit
I'm going to turn on the heat.
Over medium high heat,
for around a couple of minutes
I would just occasionally like stir this, like this.
I wanna have an even temperature.
Now I'll turn it off.
If you don't have a kitchen thermometer
just heat it on medium heat, for 3 minutes.
I will check this out 1 hour later.
Repeat this 5 more times.
Let's check every hour for the next five hours.
(upbeat music)
You see, this mixture is now really thin.
Squish this and you will see,
it's like wet paper because all this starch
was just drawn into this liquid.
We need only liquid.
Let's strain this.
So this is my large bowl; it used to be my old rice cooker.
And hemp cloth.
But you guys can use also cheese cloth.
I will pour this into here.
Stir this, so that this liquid goes through this.
I'm going to squeeze out.
I still have half of it here. Let's squeeze it.
Squeeze tightly as much as you can.
We should not waste this precious liquid.
It looks like some wet paper.
(tap water running)
I cleaned my pot.
Gather all these edges to seal tightly
and squeeze.
So, just throw this away
or if you have plants,
you can just make a kind of fertilizer.
Sweet liquid, and a little sticky.
My hands are really sticky, (laughs).
Medium high heat
and I'm going to keep boiling
until this amount is reduced to 3 1/2 cup or
4 cups.
You don't need to cover this.
Just let it boil, boil down.
Now, I boiled this 80 minutes, eight-zero minutes.
So you see all the bubbles, small bubbles.
When can I stop boiling?
Bubbles are now a little larger, larger size.
Just stir this.
Now, really nice because the bubbles
are a little like medium-sized bubbles
and I turn it off.
Lift your wooden spoon, if it's flowing very nicely and
dropping very smoothly,
And then eventually
there's some leftover here,
I think it's the right density.
If you keep boiling this,
it gets harder and harder, and
basically it becomes candy.
This is my rice cake.
I just toast this and
dip it in the rice syrup and eat.
It tastes so good.
Every Korean knows the taste.
(upbeat music)
Gorgeous!
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Let's see? Ooh, hot!
Let me taste!
So delicious!
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Sweet but not like honey.
Honey is very sweet.
This is less sweet, but it's very earthy.
(upbeat music)
I'm so happy now
because I have a lot of rice syrup.
Now, I can make all kinds of stuff
with my rice syrup.
Today, we made rice syrup, Ssal-jocheong in Korean.
Enjoy my recipe.
See you next time.
Bye.
(upbeat music)