Fermenting cooked rice is a very old Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other S E Asians tradition, the main use is to make rice wine. Fresh partially fermented rice is very sweet, great to eat as it is like a rice pudding or use for cooking. In Chinese sweet fermented rice is called 甜酒釀 'tian jiu niang' or 醪糟 'lao zao'. This is not rice pulp after rice wine is filtered. The cooked rice is only partially fermented for few days till it becomes very wet like porridge, very sweet.with a nice fragrance and a hint of alcohol. The rice used must be cooked glutinous rice and the fermenting yeast must be rice wine yeast.
Ingredients 500g glutinous rice 1 rice yeast ball water
Method: 1. Soak the rice for 4 - 5 hours or overnight. Drain. Put in a glass dish add enough water to just cover the rice. Steam for about 30 - 40 minutes till rice is cooked through. Can also cook rice in microwave or rice cooker, cooking time will be different. 2. Cover and leave rice to cool. 3. Boil some water leave to cool. Crush the rice yeast with pestle and mortar to powder. 5. Put the rice in clean mixing bowl, loosen with a wooden spoon the rice is very sticky difficult to stir. Sprinkle with boiled cooled water and ground rice yeast to loosen rice and thoroughly mix yeast into the rice. Amount of water needed is about 1/2 cup, a little bit more is ok too. 6. Pour rice mixture into a thoroughly clean glass jar or plastic container. You can make a hole in the centre of the rice (not essential), this will give indication when rice has fermented and juice is appearing in the hole. 7. Cover (not air tight) and leave in the warmest place in your house or next to a radiator during winter time. 8. Check the rice after 2 days (much longer up to a week if room temperature is cool). When the rice becomes very wet and juice collecting on bottom of container or around the container it's ready. Another indication is juice started to collect at the centre hole made previously. The texture to look for is the rice is soggy like thick rice porridge and taste very sweet. If it tastes sour or too alcoholic something has gone wrong maybe overferment or temperature too high. 9. Stir the mixture, store in clean jar or original container and leave in the fridge up to a month. Do not air tight the jar due to further fermentation. The mixture will continue to ferment so the longer you leave it more alcoholic it becomes when sugar turns to alcohol or become a bit sour when sugar turns to vinegar. So use it when the mixture is still at its sweetest stage. If you are not going to eat it within a month can put some in the freezer.
