How the Japanese prepare mochi dessert (3 photos + 2 videos)

Japanese cuisine is full of unusual dishes. One of them is the outlandish mochi dessert.





In recent years, a dessert from Japan has been gaining popularity - mochi. These are round balls of rice dough with sweet fillings and different flavors. However, in fact, mochi is not really a dessert, it is basis for many dishes. Moreover, it is very dangerous: an inexperienced cook can get injured while cooking.



In fact, these sweet balls are called daifukumochi, and Mochi is the name of a dough made from rice. Actually, from mochi they make not only sweets: it is added to soups, mochi becomes the basis for hearty dishes, as well as cakes are made from it, which are traditionally eat on New Year's Eve. Cheese is even prepared from this dough, or rather its analogue, in which is lactose free. The process of making mochi is comparable to the real one an art that not everyone can master.



Mochi is made from a special type of rice. Groats must be high in gluten: after thermal processing, it becomes sticky and dense. Then it starts interesting: rice is placed in a special mortar made of wood and they begin to crush huge hammer. Usually they work in pairs: one person moistens the dough, the other hits him with a hammer. These actions require special skill and resemble some kind of martial art: chefs even scream when working with hammer.



Each hammer blow must be clear, because otherwise case, you could injure your colleague. After the dough well beaten off, various dishes are made from it. Captured on video this process, and at the end, sweet daifukumochi are obtained from the dough, which love not only in Japan, but also outside the Land of the Rising Sun.

Of course, today there is modern equipment for making mochi, and even in Japan, this dough is not always made in a mortar.