Japanese Rice Cakes – Homemade Rice Cakes from Scratch

This recipe teaches us how to easily make Korean and Japanese rice cakes with 3 simple ingredients: white rice, water, and butter(or vegetable oil).

Homemade rice cakes are so chewy and delicious. They are perfect for making tteokbokki (Korean spicy rice cakes), tteokguk (Korean rice cake soup), yaki mochi (grilled Japanese rice cake), and zenzai (red bean soup with mochi).

Japanese Rice Cakes vs Korean Rice Cakes

Japanese rice cakes, also known as mochi, are soft and chewy buns or cuboids made of glutinous rice or Japanese sushi rice. The rice is soaked, steamed and then pounded.

In many Asian cultures, hand-pounded rice cake is a lucky food during Spring Festival. People will put freshly steamed hot rice in a giant bucket, and take turns to pound the rice with a wooden hammer for hours until the rice grains turn into a smooth rice cake dough.

Although the hand-pounding method is very time-consuming and labor-intensive, However, rice cakes made in this way have the most chewy and bouncy texture.

To make things easier, nowadays people would use a stand mixer to knead the rice dough instead of pounding by hand.

Korean rice cakes, also known as tteok, can be largely divided into four categories: “steamed tteok” (찌는 떡), “pounded tteok” (치는 떡), “boiled tteok” (삶는 떡) and “pan-fried tteok” (지지는 떡). 

The category that we are most familiar with should be the “steamed tteok”. Soaked rice grains are ground into powder and mixed with water, before being shaped into flat discs that were steamed. Then you can roll the steamed rice dough into a long cylinder shape, cut it into finger-size pieces, and use them to make tteokbokki.

As we can see, the main difference between Japanese rice cakes and Korean rice cakes is that we steam the rice before pounding to make Japanese rice cakes, while we grind the rice before steaming to make Korean rice cakes.

The method we are going to use today is more like the hand-pounded Japanese rice cake method. But there is no strict rule of making rice cakes. You can always cut a hand-pounded rice cake dough into short cylinder shape and use it to make Korean rice cake dishes.

Some tips for making Japanese rice cakes

1. Choice of Rice

You can use short grain white rice, short grain white rice, and sweet rice/glutinous rice to make milk rice cakes.

The rule of thumb is using rice that’s sticky after cooked. Do not use long grain rice, brown rice, basmati rice, or wild rice. Otherwise your rice cakes will be coarse and hard instead of chewy and smooth.

2. Soak the rice

Rinse the rice grains, then add enough cold water to cover them, soak for at least 4 hours (can do overnight).

After this step, you should be able to easily crushed with fingers. With this step, your stand mixer will be able to knead the steamed rice into a smooth dough.

3. Vegan adaptation

I added some unsalted butter to the rice dough to make the rice cakes less sticky and softer.

Feel free to substitute the butter in this recipe with the same amount of vegetable oil to make this recipe vegan friendly.

4. Warm stand mixer

This recipe requires your stand mixer to knead the rice dough for at least 40 minutes. The longer the kneading time is, the smoother the rice cake’s texture is.

However, continuing to use the mixer and while it is too warm may cause damage to the mixer. 😖

If your mixer feels warm, let it rest and cool entirely internally before resuming mixing. I gave my mixer a 15-minute break for every 10 minutes of working.

While the mixer is resting, I’d cover the mixer bowl with plastic food wrap to prevent the rice dough from drying. 

5. Can I make rice cakes without a stand mixer?

Technically, yes, you can make hand-pounded rice cakes without a stand mixer. Rice cake’s origin story can be dated back to as many as 2,500 years ago. I am sure that Asian Chinese didn’t make rice cakes with a stand mixer.

If you have the patience, you hand pound steamed rice with mortar and pestle for hours until it turns bouncy and smooth.

If you want to save some energy, you can follow the method I introduced in my milk rice cake recipe, use a blender to blend raw rice with water then steam it into rice cakes.

6. How to make yaki mochi?

Make two shallow cross cuts on each side of a Japanese rice cake, do not cut through. Place the rice cakes on a griddle, a charcoal stove, or a nonstick pan to grill for about 8 minutes until the rice cakes expand and crisp up. Or you can bake the rice cakes at 450 F for 10 minutes until they puff ups.

Yaki mochi is usually served with a soy sauce and sugar mixture. But I prefer drizzling it with sweetened condensed milk.

7. How to steam without a steamer?

If you don’t have a steamer at home, you can fill a large pot with 2 inches of water, place a steamer rack (or three golf-ball-size aluminum foil balls) on the bottom, put bowl on top of the rack/balls, put the lid on, and bring the water to a boil to steam the rice over medium high heat for 40 minutes.

8. Why is my rice cake dough so sticky?

The dough will be very sticky if it is still warm. If that happens, you can cover the dough with plastic food wrap, and keep it in the fridge for 1 hour until it’s completely cooled down. Once it has chilled, the dough will be less sticky than before.

9. How to make tteokbokki with homemade rice cakes?

This recipe makes rice cakes that are softer and less chewier than store-bought Korean rice cakes. When you use these rice cakes to make tteokbokki, different from store-bought rice cakes, make sure you don’t boil the homemade rice cakes in the soup for too long. Otherwise they may melt into the sauce/soup.

For homemade tteokbokki, start by coating 2 cups of frozen rice cakes with 1 tbsp of cooking oil, and baking or air frying them at 355F for 20 minutes or until crispy. Check out my tteokbokki recipe here.

EQUIPMENT you will need:

• Steamer (Or a large pot and a steamer rack)
• Stand mixer
• Nonstick silicone pastry mat (optional)

INGREDIENTS List:

• 2 cups short grain white rice (Can also use sushi rice or glutinous rice. Do not use long grain rice or brown rice)
• 3 cups cold water (For soaking rice)
• 1 cup cold water (To be added into the soaked rice)
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter (Or vegetable oil)

Step-by-step INSTRUCTIONS 

1. Wash 2 cups of uncooked short grain white rice for 3 to 4 times, until the water becomes clear. Soak the rice in 3 cups of cold water overnight. After soaked, the rice grains should be easily crushed with fingers. Drain the water.

2. Pour the drained rice grains into a plate, add 1 cup of cold water to the plate. Steam the rice over medium high heat for 40 minutes or until fully cooked.

3. Transfer the steamed rice to a stand mixer bowl, add 2 tbsp of unsalted butter (no need to soften or melt, because the rice is hot enough). Use a flat beater to mix the rice over medium speed (speed 3 out of 6 speeds on my machine) for 40 minutes. 

Note 1: My stand mixer always turn hot to touch when I keep it working for longer than 10 minutes. Continuing to use the mixer and while it is too warm may cause damage to the mixer. If your mixer feels warm too, you should let it rest and cool entirely internally before resuming mixing. I gave my mixer a 15-minute break for every 10 minutes of working. While the mixer is resting, I’d cover the mixer bowl with plastic food wrap to prevent the rice dough from drying. 

4. 40 minutes later, transfer the rice cake dough to a nonstick silicone pastry mat, or cover the countertop with a few layers of food wrap to prevent rice cakes from sticking onto it.

5. Knead the rice cake dough with your hands for about 5 minutes until it looks and feels smooth. The dough will be very sticky if it is still warm. If that happens, you can cover the dough with plastic food wrap, and keep it in the fridge for 1 hour until it’s completely cooled down. It will be less stickier once it’s cold.

6. To make Japanese rice cakes (kiri mochi), divide the dough into two halves, take one of them, use your palms to press the dough into ½-inch-thick. Cut the dough into several 2½”L X 1½”W X ½”H cuboids. You can use these rice cakes for making yaki mochi (grilled Japanese rice cake) and zenzai (red bean soup with mochi).

7. To make Korean rice cakes (garaetteok), take a small piece of rice cake dough and roll it into a ½-inch-diameter cylinder, then cut the cylinder into 2-inch-long pieces, about the size of your little finger. You can use these rice cakes for making tteokbokki (Korean spicy rice cakes) and tteokguk (Korean rice cake soup).

Storage of homemade Japanese rice cakes:

The best method is to freeze your rice cakes.

You can line them on a baking sheet or a large plate (freezer safe). Make sure that the rice cakes do not touch each other. Then, you just place the baking sheet straight into the freezer. After 4 hours to overnight, the rice cakes will harden. At this point, you can remove them from the baking sheet and freeze them in a Ziploc bag. 

Homemade rice cakes can stay fresh in the freezer for up to 1 year. 

To soften frozen rice cakes, you just blanch them in hot boiling water for about 30 seconds, drain and pat dry the rice cakes with some kitchen paper.

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