Our injeolmi recipe makes traditional Korean sweet rice cake that are soft, chewy and nutty. We’ve simplified our recipe so that making these chewy, nutty little snacks won’t be too messy at home.
Besides, these classic Korean treats make a wonderful bite for you as a midday snack in the office or while you watch K-drama at home. By the end, you'll know the ins and outs of this treat and how to make it in your home kitchen.
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What is Injeolmi?
Injeolmi (인절미) is a traditional Korean snack that is a type of sweet glutinous rice cake. Cooks usually coat the sticky cake base with various grounded beans and nuts or gomul in Korean. Within Asian cuisine, they are categorically a variety of dduk or tteok, which refers to Korean rice cakes.
Typically, cooks make these cakes by steaming and pounding glutinous rice flour. Once they reach a smooth yet sticky consistency, they cut them into bite-size portions and finally coat them with gomul.
The most representative gomul used is roasted soybean powder. However, just as Koreans love different types of beans and grains, as seen in their Misugaru latte drink, Korean rice cakes have many coating varieties. For example, black sesame, adzuki red beans and chestnuts are common.
The thing that separates this Korean cake from others, such as bento cake, is its chewiness and stickiness. The gluten in the flour is responsible. When worked, gluten becomes very sticky, and carbohydrates in the rice become sweet when worked in the same way. Therefore, the cakes are sweet and sticky rather than dry and crisp.
Cultural Significance
You often find these cakes in Korea at a couple's wedding ceremony. The happy couple eats the cake and tells one another that they hope to stick together forever, just as the sticky rice cakes stick together. Cute!
Even today, many Koreans love their national treat, injeolmi. Many restaurants and cafes use the base flavour of this treat to create more modern desserts such as ice cream, cakes, and pastries!
Outside of the kitchen, the snack's creamy, light brown colour is so popular that many Koreans name their pets the same colour: "Injeolmi."
Injeolmi Ingredients
You’ll need glutinous rice flour, roasted soybean powder, water, sugar and salt to make our injeolmi recipe. You should pay close attention to the glutinous rice flour and the roasted soybean flour.
Glutinous Rice Flour
Glutinous rice flour is really important for our recipe. The gluten within it contributes to the final dish's flavour and texture.
Roasted Soybean Powder
Roasted soybean powder enhances the flavour and texture of our Korean snack. Its nutty flavour is representative of injeolmi. In addition, it helps prevent the snacks from sticking together during preparation. By comparison, think of icing sugar's role in Turkish delight.
We rarely spot this Korean nutty powder in our local Asian grocery store, but you can try your local Asian supermarket to see if they stock it.
How to Make Injeolmi
These cakes are made by cooking the tteok dough and then pounding it to achieve the right consistency. Traditionally, the woman of the house would make the dough and pound it in a pestle and mortar for a long time. It symbolises her hope that her daughter would get on well with her new husband's family.
Stories often recount that the pounding took so long that many people took turns doing the work. Often, men helped in the kitchen to pound the dough because they were generally quite strong.
The tteok dough is cooked before being pounded. When it's at the right consistency, cooks simply toss the dough in soybean powder before chopping it into portion-sized pieces and serving it.
Injeolmi Recipe (Soybean Powder Rice Cakes)
Ingredients
- 1 cup glutinous rice flour
- ½ cup roasted soybean powder
- 2 tbsps sugar
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- 180 ml water
Equipment
Cooking Instructions
- Sift glutinous rice flour, salt, and sugar into a microwaveable mixing bowl. Then, create a small well in the middle and pour water in small increments while mixing thoroughly. Mix it well until a runny batter that's slightly thick is formed.
- Cover the bowl with clingfilm and cook it in the microwave for two minutes at 600W. Then, mix the hot dough with a spoon for about 30 seconds. Cover the bowl again with clingfilm before cooking the dough for one more minute.
- Transfer the Korean rice cake dough into a bowl, and pound it for 1 to 2 minutes. In this process, you'll make bubbles that will pop as you pound - this will mean the consistency is just right.
- Spread the roasted soybean powder on a cutting board and place the dough in the centre of the powder. Roll it around to coat the dough with the powder.
- Cut the dough into bite-sized pieces.
- Finally, coat each piece of injeolmi dough with the roasted soybean powder by tossing them around the board, then transfer them to a serving plate.
Nutrition
Calories have been calculated using an online calculator. Nutritional information offered on Honest Food Talks is for general information purposes and is only a rough estimate.
Ingredient Substitutes
The ingredients in our recipe that you might need to substitute are soybean powder and sweet rice flour.
You can replace the soybean powder with another nutty coating. For example, black sesame or red bean powder are common gomul coatings for making injeolmi.
Finding a substitute for glutinous rice flour is a little trickier. Glutinous rice flour is unique in its smooth yet chewy consistency. You can use tapioca flour instead to produce a chewy texture. We recommend substituting tapioca flour in a one-to-one ratio by weight. However, it won’t be as chewy as glutinous rice flour.
How To Store Korean Mochi
To extend the snack's life a little, store it in the fridge in an airtight container. It's safe to eat within 3-5 days.
When you remove them from the fridge, microwave the treats for a few seconds to warm them up.
Injeolmi Vs Kinako Mochi
The main difference between injeolmi and kinako mochi is the coating variety. The Korean version has a variety of coatings, such as black sesame and chestnut. Meanwhile, Japanese kinako mochi specifically refers to using only soybean powder as the coating of the rice cake.
Aside from that small difference, the production method is much the same, leading to an extremely similar snack. Both the rice cake treats are made from glutinous rice flour, sugar, and water and coated with roasted soybean powder.
This is an interesting example of two neighbouring cultures preparing the same dish with the same ingredients.
Is Injeolmi Healthy?
Injeolmi is considered a healthy traditional snack as it is very nutritionally dense.
However, glutinous rice contains a lot of carbohydrates, which convert to sugars in your digestive system very easily. For this reason, you should be careful to control how much of this dessert you consume, as it is dense in calories.
Popular variations of Injeolmi
Because of how simple and tasty this Korean snack is, many recipes have adapted injeolmi into wonderful original versions.
Injeolmi Bingsu
First, we have injeolmi bingsu. This is a type of shaved milk ice dessert similar to a snow cone. However, the portion is usually large and best for sharing. It is topped with soybean powder or small pieces of the snack cake.
Waffles
Waffles are another popular adaptation of the classic. They are made by pressing portions of the cake in a waffle maker, which cooks the treat until it's crispy and delightful. In addition, they typically have toppings such as honey, fresh fruit, or even ice cream to taste.
Toast
Injeolmi Toast is a dessert consisting of rice cakes sandwiched between beautifully toasted milk bread slices. Typically, honey is inside, and the combination of crispy and soft textures is delightful!
Doughnuts
Finally, we come to injeolmi doughnuts - a sweet treat that pairs the texture of a doughnut with the flavour of sweet rice cakes. These doughnuts are typically basic yeasted doughnuts cooked to perfection before being tossed in soybean powder to give them that classic taste infusion.
We hope you've learned how to make this awesome K-snack! If you tried making it, post a photo and tag us on Instagram @honestfoodtalks.
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