How to Make Japanese Dango：Sticky rice ball dessert with Sweet soy sauce

Spring has come to New Zealand！

Cherry blossom blooming and warm whether… perfect day for “Hanami”, meaning cherry blossom viewing picnic!

Often in Japan, we eat “Dango”, rolled bite-size rice cake on skewers, as sweets complementary to cherry blossom.

So after seeing all the cherry blossom last week, I decided to cook up some Dango on skewers.

Main ingredient, glutinous rice flour was available from local Park’nSave supermarket, in Auckland, New Zealand.

Ingredients for making Dango

In traditional Japanese cooking, dango is made from Dango flour, which is a mix of glutinous rice flour and non-glutinous rice flour.

This time round though, I made dango from 100% glutinous rice flour.

They are also easier to make. This way, resulting dango is softer and stickier than traditional method.

What we need:

For Dango

• Glutinous rice flour
• Water
• Large size pot
• Bowl
• Spoon
• Skewer or chopstick (to stick dango with)

Mitarashi sauce

• Soy sauce
• Sugar
• Corn flour

Red bean paste (Anko) also goes well with dango. These can be purchased from Asian supermarket or made from azuki beans.

Glutinous rice flour was purchased from a local Park'n Save. These were located in the international section.

This is the glutinous rice flour I used this time. They are produced in Thailand.

1 bag contains 400g of glutinous rice flour and only cost NZD1.70. Cheap!

There were two similarly labelled bags of rice flour; blue label and green label.

We purchased the green label bag because the ingredients described was “glutinous rice”, which is more suitable for making dango.

Nutritional and ingredient information on the package.

In Japan, you make dango from either “dango flour” which is a mix of glutinous rice flour and non-glutinous rice flour, or “shiratama-flour” which is 100% glutinous rice flour that has been washed in water.

“Shiratama-flour” is more expensive due to added processing process of washing glutinous rice flour in water, and results in really soft, sticky dango.

I used the same method for making dango from “shiratama-flour” with glutinous rice flour above. It worked well and resulted in very soft, yummy dango.

How to make dango (sticky rice-cake ball) from glutinous rice flour

１．First, combine water and glutinous rice flour and mix well.

For each 1 cup of glutinous flour, you need roughly 1/2 cup of water.

However, you need to mix and adjust the amount of water to achieve the right consistency.

Ideal mixture will have smooth texture and can be rolled into ball-shape, without sticking on the hand.

If you add just a little too much water, the mixture will be too soft to make a ball.

Steps for making the mixture right is to;

add water –>  mix really well –> if too powdery, add a table spoon of water –> mix well… repeat adding another table spoon of water…..

Mixing well in between is very important.

Even when you initially feel  “Oh it is so powdery, perhaps I should add some water?”, after mixing really well, the moisture will spread through the mixture and make it moist.

So don’t be hasty to add more water, before mixing and kneading well.

Even after kneading, if you feel it will not become one big mass, then add one table spoon of water at a time, and mix again.

In process of kneading. There was not enough water so I added another table spoon of water.

Ideal consistency to achieve is that the mixture is firm and smooth, but does not stick to your hands.

Even when you squeeze with your hand….

Mixture will not stick to your hand.

２．Once right consistency is achieved, roll into bite-size balls.

Roll mixtures to make a bite-size balls. It is quite fun part of making dango.

If you have children with you, get them to help you roll small dango balls.

Note if they will become soft and squishy after cooked. So if you are concerned about choking hazards, roll them into small sizes, or slightly squash the ball-shaped dango to make slightly flattened shape.

３．Boil a pot full of water, and cook dango-balls for a few minutes.

Fill up a medium size-pot with water and bring it to boil.

Once hot water is boiling hard, lower the heat to medium strength.

One by one, gently place dango-balls into the boiling water.

They will all sink to the bottom of the pot first. As they are cooked, they will slowly start floating to the top of boiling water.

Half of dango balls are starting to float to the surface.

All floating on the surface.

４．Boil for 1-2 minutes then move them to cold water

Once your dango balls have floated to the top of boiling water, cook further 1-2 minutes, and they are ready to be taken off the heat.

Just wait till all of dango balls are floating, then wait for 1-2 minutes. In the mean time, prepare a bowl of icy water.

Then scoop dango balls and move them into the ball with icy water to cool.

You only need several ice cubes in a bowl, as you only want to cool dangos and not freeze them.

５．Dango balls are cooked and ready!

Drain icy water and dish up your dango balls with your favorite toppings.

Topping for your Dango: Mitarashi (Sweet soy)? Anko (Azuki bean paste)?

So your dango is finished and ready to be served with your favorite topping.

One idea is to simply sprinkle sugar or sugar-mixed with soy powder over dango.

Alternatively you can prepare other toppings; this time, I prepared Mitarashi (Sweet-soy) and Anko (Azuki red bean paste).

How to make Mitarashi (Sweet Soy) Topping

Mitarashi sauce, or sweet soy sauce for dango can easily be prepared from Soy sauce, sugar and corn flour.

Mix 2 Tbs soy sauce and 3 Tbs white sugar, 1 Tbs of corn flour with 80ml water.

Then repeat the following steps：

• Mix really well
• –> heat in a microwave for 30 seconds
• –>  mix well –> heat in a microwave for 30 seconds ….

Repeat this process until the mixture becomes transparent and thickened.

You may need to adjust the amount of corn flour to achieve right consistency to suit your preference.

As for Anko (Azuki bean paste), You can either buy pre-made azuki bean paste, or you could try to make yourself.

How to make Anko will be explained in different article, though.

Decorating Dango with Skewers

Now you are ready to decorate dango, you can stick them in bamboo skewers.

Cut a few millimeter off the tip of skewers to make the sharp ends more blunt. (Safer for children)

Just by being on skewers, they look yummier and more professional, don’t they!?

Mitarashi(Sweet soy) dango, finished!

Anko dango (on chopsticks) ready!

Dango made from Glutinous Rice Flour were very Tasty!

This was the first time I used Thailand glutinous rice flour rather than Japanese rice flour, but it was a great success.

Just as a reminder again, the rice flour used was the green packet with Glutinous rice as the main ingredients.

Kids loved dango too!!

Eating Mitarashi-dango and Anko-dango, it feels as if we never left Japan.... Even more perfect if served with a cup of green tea!

In the future, it would also be great to serve dango with some soy-powder (= Kinako) and brown sugar syrup, as well.

(These can be prepared from pan-fried soy beans and brown sugar, respectively)

This time we used glutinous rice flour as the main ingredient, but you can also mix some glutinous rice flour and non-glutinous rice flour to make more firm, hard dango.

Related Articles:

Enjoyed cherry blossom? Enjoy cherry leaves too!

How to Make Kara-Age, Japanese Style Deep Fried Chicken

How to make Mochi, the Sticky-Rice Cake! 

　

Japanese Matcha Set

Japanese Homestyle Cooking

Enjoyed cherry blossom? Enjoy cherry leaves too!

Spring is here in New Zealand.

Until about last week, cherry blossoms around Auckland were in full bloom. So beautiful!

But when cherry blossom flowers finish and trees start to learn green…. you might wan to go back to cherry blossom tree again.

Because if you want to make edible pickled cherry leaves, now is your chance….

Barley rice for healthy eating

It is well known that rice is served daily in many Asian countries as the main source of carbohydrate.

In Japan, many people eat rice daily. But did you know that Japanese people often mix other grains into their rice to make rice more nutritious?

One of the “healthier” rice that is popular among people of Japan is barley rice.

What it barley rice?

In normal white rice, the bran and skin of rice is removed. While this process makes rice white and tasty, it removes most of nutrients.

So people in Japan sometimes choose to eat brown rice, or mix other grains with white rice to supplement nutrients.

One example of this is barley rice; where white rice is cooked with some added barley.

Many people in Japan  eat barley rice because it has many health benefit.  These include:

• Improving constipation
• Helping you lose weight
• Reduce bad cholesterol level
• Reduces high blood pressure
• Lower glycemic index – better for diabetic people

So when our family used to live in Japan, we cooked barley rice  often.

But now we are back in New Zealand, we wondered if we can find “barley” suitable for cooking barley rice.

Pearl barley: can they be used to cook barley rice?

So we headed to our favorite organic shop: Huckle Berry.

Huckle Berry　→　http://www.huckleberry.co.nz/

Huckle Berry sells many types of organic food. They also sell various beans and grains in bulk (priced per kg).

Many of these organic bulk beans/grains are hard to find in a regular supermarket.

Some of grains/beans that are sold at Huckle Berry, that may interest Japanese food lovers are….

• Millet …these grains are sometimes mixed with white rice to cook nutritious grain-rice. Japanese cooking uses specific millets called “Hie” and “Awa”, but I am not certain which these millets are closely related to.
• Azuki Bean　…These beans can be used to make red-bean pastes, used in Japanese traditional sweets.
• Rice Flour　… Rice flour. You can use them to make some Japanese sweets, or these can simply be used for gluten-free bakings.
• Miso、Wakame、Kombu　…Miso (Soy bean paste for miso soup), Wakame (Sea weeds for soups and salad), Kombu (Kelp for cooking or making soup) are also sold at Huckle Berry. These are all nice to use in Japanese cuisine, but many of these are organic and high in price. It may be cheaper to find alternatives at Japan mart.

At Huckle Berry, we found barley we were looking for.

These were called “Pearl Barley”.

Barley that have skins and bran removed are called “pearl barley”. They can be cooked with other ingredients to make a nice filling for a soup.

Mmm these “pearl barley” do not look that pearly. They look rather brown, compared to barley we get in Japan.

Barley that are used in Japan to cook barley rice are flattened by mechanical pressure. That way these “pressed-barley” are cracked and easier to absorb water/cook.

Pressed barley look similar but not as flattened as rolled oat.

Anyway, we decided to give these “pearl barley” a go and used them to cook barley rice.

How to cook barley rice

Cooking barley rice is simple; you wash and prepare white rice and water,  then add barley and extra water.

Typical ratio is one cup of uncooked rice, add 50g of uncooked pearl barley and 100ml extra water.

Of course if you prefer more or less barley, you can adjust the amount of barley.

For each 100g of dry pearled barley added, you want to add 200ml of water.

This time, I decided to reduce the amount of barley than the typical ratio, and cook 1.5 cups of uncooked rice with 50g barley, following steps below.

Step by step: cooking barley rice

1. Wash 1.5 cup of uncooked white rice.

2. Place washed rice in a rice cooker with right amount of water. I simply use the water level guideline on the rice cooker bowl.

3. Add 50g of pearl barley. Add extra 100ml water.

4. Mix barley and rice.

5. Let it sit for at least one hour, to allow both rice and pearl barley to absorb water. I recommend letting it sit longer if you can (like 2 – 4 hours) if you have enough time before meal.

6. Turn the rice cooker ON and cook rice.

7. When cooked, let it sit for 10 minutes, then use rice scoop to gently mix rice a few times.  Serve in a bowl.

FINISHED!!

How do barley rice taste?

When we tried barley rice…. rice is well cooked, but pearl barley grains stayed quite hard.

Pearl barley were very chewy. I think they could be softer if they were allowed to absorb water for longer.

In Japan, barley rice is cooked using pearl barley that are partially flattened by mechanical force; these are called “Oshi-mugi” (=pressed barley)

These pressed barley absorb water and cook faster, so they have similar consistency as rice, while having more sticky-texture.

So overall, the attempt to cook barely rice using pearl barley available in New Zealand was a success, with some room to improve.

Perhaps soaking pearl barley alone over night before mixing with uncooked rice may help.

Barley rice does have characteristic brown appearance of barley and some taste from barley.

So I do not recommend using barley rice for a dish that requires plain white rice, like sushi.

On the other hand, barley rice can be easily combined with curry or stew, or used in fried rice.

Summary

Pearl Barley available from local store in New Zealand can be used to cook barley rice!

• Barley rice has many health benefits compared with regular white rice
• We found some pearl barley in local Huckle berry store
• These pearl barley can be used to cook barley rice, albeit a bit firmer than ideal.
• For 50g dry pearl barley, add 100ml extra water.
• Let pearl barley absorb water for at least an hour (a few hours + desirable)
• Barley rice goes well with curry & rice, or fried rice meals.

Today, barley rice was served with Japanese fried chicken and miso soup, a nice authentic healthy Japanese meal!

How to Make Kara-Age, Japanese Style Deep Fried Chicken

My husband and children love Japanese-style chicken, like chicken Kara-Age (Deep fried chicken) and Teriyaki-chicken. Few nights ago I made some Kara-age chicken at home. Here is how we made them. 

Making Kara-age chicken

To make Kara-age Chicken, you can purchase seasoning flour from Japan mart and other asian supermarket if you wish. Or, you could save some money by just using soy sauce and other locally available ingredients.

Ingredients for Kara-Age Chicken

What you need:

• Soy sauce (Japanese one)
• Standard flour
• Ginger
• Garlic
• Chicken of your favorite portion
• Oil for deep frying

This time, we purchased about 600g of some NZ chicken nibbles from a local supermarket.  

Chicken nibbles were on special!

We also need some soy sauce, ginger, garlic, pepper and flour. As coating for the chicken, the regular method is to use standard flour. You could also make it with rice flour, or corn flour if you prefer gluten free.

If you use corn-flour, the texture of the coating would turn out to be quite hard compared to when you use standard flour. Some people prefer hard, crunchy coating. If you use rice flour, it tends to result in thin and soft coating, but taste nice either way.

If you wish, you could also try mixing flour and corn-flour, or rice flour, to get right texture of coating for your taste. I normally just using standard flour. As for oil, we used cheap canola oil purchased from a local supermarket.

Preparation

As a preparation, we will marinate chicken in soy sauce. Ideally, this preparation should be done several hours before you cook and serve the Kara-age chicken, to give it enough time for chicken to be enriched with flavoring.

If you are planning to serve Kara-age chicken for dinner, do the preparation in the morning or lunchtime. You could even do preparation on the previous day and marinate chicken overnight. This time, I prepared my chicken after lunch and deep fried them for dinner.

First, chop chicken into bite sizes. I am using chicken nibbles so there was no need to chop them. If you are using chicken breast or chicken thigh, chop them into size that is easy to eat in 2 or 3 bites. Make sure they are only ~2cm thick or so. If you have a big chunk, it becomes more difficult and takes longer to fry.

Next, you need about 3cm of ginger and 2-3 cloves of garlic.

Grind both ginger and garlic. If you don’t have a grinder, chop them very finely.

Grind, grind…

Place chicken, ginger and garlic into a plastic bag. I am using cheap medium size freezer bag from homebrand.

Add 3 table spoons of Japanese soy sauce into the bag. This time, I am using Kikkoman soy sauce that is available from the international food section of a local countdown (also other from other supermarkets).

Tight the end of the plastic bag, and mix the content lightly. Place it in another plastic bag, double-bagging it just in case, and right the end again. Place in the fridge and marinate until cooking time.

Preparation finished!

Add Flour Just Before Frying

When you are ready to deep fry your chicken and serve for a meal, open the plastic bag with chicken and add about half~2/3 cup of standard flour (or any other flour of your choice) into the plastic bag. Hold the end of bag and mix the content in the bag.

Ready to Fry!

Deep Fry in Oil

If you have a deep fryer of some sort, you could certainly try using it to fry your chicken. I am using regular flying pan below. Either way, be very careful as cooking oil will heats up well above 100 degree Celsius. Do not leave kitchen while you are using oil. Definitely do not let children run around in the kitchen.

Put oil (~2cm) into a flying pan and turn up the heat to medium strength. Wait till oil heats up. If you sprinkle a pinch of flour into the oil and it sinks or stays still, oil is still way too cold.

If a pinch of flour sprinkled quickly bubbles and floats around in the oil, then the oil has heated up. If the oil starts releasing oily smoke and you can smell it, then it is too hot. Just turn it off for your safety, wait for it to cool and try again.

Take out coated chicken pieces from the plastic bag. Place one chicken into heated oil at a time. Gently place them so oil will not splash.

Oil around chicken piece should quickly start bubbling if the oil is sufficiently warm. If it doesn’t, the oil is probably still too cold. Just wait and watch as the oil heats up and bubbling up around the first piece of chicken, before adding another one.

You can see oil bubbling.

Keep the heat on medium, and let chicken be fried in oil for 5-10 minutes. If your chicken brown too fast, your oil is too hot.

Again, do not leave from the pan and oil while you are cooking. As it cooks, the coating on the bottom side of the chicken should start to harden and brown. At the same time, you will start to see a bit of red juice coming up on the top side of the chicken. When you see this, wait till the bottom side browns then flip it around to cook the top side.

On the left chicken piece, you can see the red juice coming up. Flip!

Once you flip chicken pieces, cooked, browned coating side is now facing up.

Cook for further 5-10 minutes, until the other side is crispy and brown. Try inserting a chopstick through the chicken piece. If clear juice comes out, the inside of chicken is cooked. If the juice that comes out is still pink, lower the heat, flip chicken again and cook some more. 

Once fully cooked, the juice from inside chicken should be clear, and chicken has shrunk in size from the beginning. If you are unsure, pick up a piece of chicken and cut in half to make sure it is cooked right through. Uncooked chicken poses risks of salmonella food poisoning so make sure your chicken is properly cooked.

Tips for Making the Crispy

When you are making deep-fried food, there are a few tips for making them crispy.

First, turn up the heat a bit so the oil is at higher temperature and really bubbling, right before removing chicken from the oil.

Quickly remove chicken pieces from the oil. When you do this, lift up the majority of a chicken piece from oil, but leave one end of the chicken piece still in contact with the oil. Hold this position for 2-3 seconds, then remove them from oil and place on a paper towel.

Apparently, above step helps cooking oil to be dragged back into the pan, leaving chicken crispy. This methods can be applied to other deep fried food too. Place all chicken pieces on the metal rack or paper towel to remove the excess oil.

Some finished pieces… yum!

Kara-age is finished! Enjoy as they are, or with some freshly chopped cabbage, rice and miso soup if you want a Japanese-style meal!

Authentic! 

How to Mochi- Sticky rice cake! Part 3

So now I have got both sweet rice and bread maker, it is time to give it a go at making mochi!

Click here for previous articles →　Part 1 and Part 2 

Let’s start making mochi! 

To summarize, below are things you need to make mochi:

• Mochi rice – today we are using Daichi Sweet Rice from California
• Bread maker (if your bread maker does not have sticky rice function, then you need both bread maker and a rice cooker)
• Corn flower (we will use it when we roll the mochi into small size)
• Chopping board (we will roll our mochi on this)

Step 1: Washing Mochi Rice

We need to first wash mochi rice with water. A good amount to cook mochi in a standard size home bread maker is 2 or 3 cups of rice at a time. Be careful not to be rough when washing rice to prevent them from cracking.

Measure 2 cups of rice and put in a bowl. Pour plenty of water from a tap into the container with rice, and stir gently.

In the first wash, the water will quickly turn cloudy so discard this water, carefully not to lose any rice. You do not need to drain completely. Just remove the majority of water and immediately pour new water and start stirring – this is the second wash.

Repeat washing rice for 4~6 times until the water no longer turns cloudy compared to the beginning. Drain the water, this time properly using a net or basket.

Step 2: Place Rice and Water into the Bread Maker Container

Once rice is drained, place rice into the bread maker container. Make sure the wing piece of bread maker is set right at the bottom of the container before placing rice over it. For two cups of rice, add 1 cup of water.

The strength (or stickiness) of mochi can be changed by adjusting amount of water for how much rice you are using. If you add more, like 2 cups of water per 2 cups of rice, then you will have thinner mochi. Softer and easier to eat/swallow so this might work better for some people.

Step 3: Start the “Sticky Rice” Menu

Set the bread maker cooking container into the bread maker machine, then close the lid of the bread maker. Choose “Sticky Rice” Menu on the Bread Maker, then press Start button.

On my bread maker from Sheffield, it is number 17 menu for sticky rice.

Now Bread Maker is Making Mochi!!

Initially, the home bakery slowly warms up without stirring. So there is no sound. After about 20 minutes after starting the “Sticky Rice” menu, the stirring piece started to rotate and you could hear the sound of moving motor.

I found it to be a bit noisy at the start, but I got quickly used to the noise. It is not bad at all….for a bread maker that was so reasonably priced.

Once stirring starts, sticky rice slowly start to get pasty. After about 40 minutes, you could see that it is a big mass of squashed rice. It is looking really good!

After one hour has passed, it nearing the end of “Sticky Rice” program. The content is looking smooth like it should be.

Step 4: Shaping Mochi

Once the program finishes, the bread maker makes a loud beeping noise to let me know. Get a chopping board and corn starch ready. Sprinkle corn starch over the chopping board. Also have some corn starch in a bowl nearby ready to be used.

Corn flour on the shopping board!

On a corn-starch-coated chopping board, pour the content of the bread maker. Be careful not to burn, both the container and the content are really hot! Let it cool down for a while until it is at a temperature you can touch.

Coat both your hands with plenty of corn-flour. Pull & tear to make mochi into small, round shape. You must do this while mochi is still warm.

Finished!

If you wish to eat them fresh, you can dip them in soy sauce and wrap them in Nori (seaweed sheet) to taste. 

You can alternatively have Kinako-mochi, by mixing sugar and soy powder in 1:1 ratio and coating a piece of mochi with this mixture.

Storage of Remaining Mochi

You can coat remaining mochi with spare corn-flour and place them in air-tight container.  Store in the fridge for a few week. They will not rot easily but watch out for any mold growth.

Eating Mochi Stored in the Fridge

Heat them in the oven for 10 minutes until the surface of mochi browns and becomes crispy. Crispy surface might break and sticky mochi may come out from inside – this is a good sign of roasted mochi!

ENJOY! Be careful not to choke on a mochi. Mochi can be a choking hazard for elders and children in Japan. They are super yummy but be careful when giving them to children or your elder family members.