The Hairy Viking's Cooking Blog: Mochi Rice Cake Gooeyness (Nama kirimochi)

I LOVE MOCHIIIII!

For those who don't know mochi is a soft, chewy type of Japanese rice cake that can be sweet or savoury and I lurve it. Especially Nama Kirimochi which literally translates as raw rice cake but rock-hard rice block would be a more accurate title.

They have the consistency of lumps of plastic at this point.

Now, I have made my own fresh mochi up until last week because I had never been able to find these little suckers. Let me tell you making mochi is a right royal pain-in-the-ass. The more mochi-like the rice gets the more it sticks to EVERYTHING and clean up is a nightmare of epic proportions. In fact I'd rather get a back, crack and sack wax (thank you Bali) than make this stuff, so I usually put it off until I'm just CRAVING it and make a whole lot at once then freeze it.

I found an awesome recipe for mochi pizza (yeah I know right but I like trying weird stuff) on youtube last week, thanks to runnyrunny999 and it was awesome. I made a Japanese style pizza because I don't do cheese very often.

But today I missed breakfast having to go out early and I was craving a quick snack. So I grabbed some of these kirimochi and topped them with soy sauce and the sprinkling of 'mozzarella style' (ie tastes of nothing, especially not like real mozzarella) cheese that's been sitting in my freezer for the past 6 months to make a cheese mochi pizza snack. Mmmmmmmmmmm.

Firstly I turned the gas to medium and used a non stick griller pan. Gave it a light oil with cooking spray and stuck the two mochi blocks side by side and waited till they got gooey.

On a side note if you can find this stuff and want to try this you MUST use a non-stick pan or you'll think it's been super-glued to the base and you'll spend the next three hours crying trying to get it off! (yes that was a painful personal experience right there)


First they get soft round the edges and then kind of melt together.

Stage gooey: Completed.

Once they've melted together I put around a 1/4 cup of water in the pan and stick a lid on top and allow it to steam until all the water is gone.

As long as the gas isn't too high its really hard to burn this stuff :)

Once it's done steaming it'll be really, really soft and sticky. I flip it over at this point and after spraying my spatula with a bit of oil I squish it and spread it out a bit so it's not so thick.


Flipped and squished. Also crisping up nicely.

As the insides heat up and it will expand like a blow-up mattress and release a bit of steam. I keep turning it regularly to keep both side crispy and heat it evenly all the way through.

Looking good - all nice and puffy

Next I sprinkled soy sauce all over the top for a bit of flavour for my bland, fake, wannabe-mozzarella and flipped it over to re-crisp it.

Looks kinda burnt but it's just the soy sauce

Then I took it off the heat whacked it on one of the 'don't-quite-fit' oven trays and pre-heated the oven-grill while I topped it with cheese. Five minutes under the grill was all it took.