Mochi Pounding
A happy new 2019 year !!!!
How did you spend New Year’s holidays?
We did Mochi pounding during the holidays in the end of 2018 year.
Actually we usually do this with our families and relatives in the end of year at our grandparents house to prepare Mochi on New Years day.
This time, We would like to report that event to you all:)
Why are we doing Mochi pounding?
Mochi means rice cake in English and it mainly used for the ingredients of Japanese sweets called ” Wagashi”.
However, eating Mochi as ” Ozouni” on the new years day is also well known as one of Japanese customs to cerebrate new years.
For more information about Ozouni, please check our past blog!
Recently it seems difficult to do Mochi pounding for spacing reason and at the same time you can buy Mochi anywhere anytime.
However, merchandised Mochi is totally different taste, compared to own handmade mochi!
How do we Mochi pounding?
We would like to introduce you how to do Mochi pounding then!
At first, We need to prepare sticky rice called Mochi-gome, not the usual rice,
and soaked them into the cold water including a just little bit sake for a night.
We need to do pounding for 9 rounds this year, so that need to separate sticky rice into 9 bowls.( It was about 30kg in total!!)
On the next day, we steam the sticky rice.
It’s so cold to wait for the steamed sticky rice outside, but there are a lot of things to do during that in case we will do Mochi pounding outside,
such us chopping wood for fire, setting up to form Mochi after pounding, and so on.
Now it’s time to Mochi pounding, the main step of the event!
At very first time, we need to press and grind the rice, otherwise the rice will be spread out! Then we’ll do pounding.
This time, We invited our friends as well and they enjoyed it all the steps of this event, since they never have done this before.
After pounding, we form Mochi to keep them.
Since Mochi is very sticky, we usually use starch powder to form it.
After some rounds, we enjoy eating fresh Mochi, just after pounding!
Usually we prepare soy sauce, sea weed, soy beans powder,as dipping sauce.
We do this tough event every year, but it is very good chance to know how to do it from our relatives, since they are doing this longer than us and of course they are specialist !
Hopefully we can keep this custom and introduce our guests who are staying in our accommodation too in the near future.
That will be our next step!
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