Korea Life and Cultures

After reading one of my recent comments about shik-hae, I immediately started craving it. I have a thing with food. If I want to eat something. *I MUST* or I become one cranky lil old woman. =P

Ingredients Needed:

• 1.5 CUP cooked rice (1/2 sweet rice, 1/2 short grain white rice)
• 3/4 CUP yut gee-leum (fine malt powder), 1 gallon water
• 1/3 CUP sugar (add as much as you want to your taste! I don’t like things *too* sweet)

I took a picture of the malt powder so you know what to look for.

Put 3/4 cups into the big bowl…

…and cover it with about a gallon of water. Mix it GENTLY just using your fingers to break apart the clumps. There’s no need to use a whisk or anything like that.

Add some rice into a rice cooker. If you don’t have a rice cooker, I *think* you can use a crock pot at the lowest setting. I’ve never tried, but I’m thinking it’s the same concept. I had this rice leftover so I just used that, but you can use a 50/50 combination of sweet rice and white rice as well. This is just a regular Korean bowl-full of rice.

Let the malt powder/water mixture sit out for about two hours and then CAREFULLY (I used a strainer, but forgot to take a picture) pour out the TOP part. Basically, just try and pour out the clear liquid at top…

And leave the thick malt at the bottom.

Add the malt water to the rice…

And break apart all the rice pieces and make it nice and smooth.

Then close the lid and hit “KEEP WARM!” Make sure not to COOK the rice. You just want the temp to be “warm” for FIVE HOURS! Yup, just press “KEEP WARM” and go and run some errands.

After you get back, open the lid and you should see little rice particles floating around.

Transfer the rice water mixture into a POT and bring it to a STRONG boil. At this point I added about 2 CUPS of water and 1/3 CUP of sugar.

Skim off any of the gunk that arises. Then transfer everything into a storage container and let it chill overnight in the fridge.

The next morning, you are ready to serve! Enjoy~~ I will be back later with the *egg roll* update. I went out and bought a Egg Pan!