Alright~ So on the latest episode of Gabi's adventures to becoming Korean, I decided to try to make a traditional Korean rice drink called Ssikhye 식혜~ It was a pretty easy process that just took a long time as you should wait a lot between steps~ Here's the steps but I have yet to completely perfect the process so please feel free to modify my instructions~~
What you'll need:
Barley Malt Powder 엿기름 가루 1 cup
white rice 1 cup
water 6 cups
2 slices of ginger (10g)
1 tbl sugar
3/4 cup sugar
First, start by soaking 1 cup of Barley Malt Powder (엿기름 가루) in water (6 cups) for 2-3 hours. The malt should sink to the bottom. Once most of the malt has disappeared to the bottom, you should use your hands to squeeze the malt until the water becomes a milky color. Then you can transfer the water to another bowl by running the malt water through a strainer. I used a paper towel so that it wouldn't go through the strainer and squeeze more out of the malt. You can throw the malt away after this step.
You will then leave the water to settle for 2-3 hours. A clear top liquid should form at the end of it. If it's not all clear, don't worry. Then after the time has finished, you should again filter this water and put into the rice cooker with the cup of rice (this time use something on the strainer like a paper towel). At the bottom you'll get a white residue that shouldn't be in the drink (hence the paper towel). If you don't have a rice cooker, you can also put this in a pot and let it sit on low heat for the same time.
You'll turn your rice cooker on warm (NOT COOK!!). we're not cooking rice... just keeping this warm through the process. This part of the process takes up 4-5 hours. You'll add the rice and liquid and 1 tablespoon of sugar and mix the rice, sugar, and liquid together. Then close the lid and wait.
After 4 hours (or 5), you should see several pieces of rice floating at the top of your liquid. You're then going take this out and use a strainer to filter out the rice. You will need to wash the rice with cold water to get out the extra starch. You can store this rice in the refrigerator with a bit of water to later put in your Ssikhae for serving or you can put into the glass serving jar at the end.
You're going to boil the liquid with some slices of ginger (I put too much in my first batch so ignore how many I have here... hahaha... in some recipes it's optional so I don't think it matters how little you put in). You'll also add in your sugar. I used 3/4 cup sugar in my second batch cause the first batch I used 1 full cup and it was tooooooo sweet! but 3/4 cup seems about right or a little less. It's all up to you~~ If it's not sweet enough, you can always add more later. Or if it's too sweet, you can add water~~ ^^
And you can see that some rice went through but that's okay as well. Boil for 10-15 minutes, taking out the white residue (foam-ish stuff) with a spoon. After it's finished you should let it cool down and then place into your jar preference~ With or without the rice~
Here you can see the white stuff I was referring to. You'll want to take that out~ By boiling this, we are stopping the fermenting process.
Voila! Our finished product~~ I hope you'll enjoy this Sikhye as much as I do~~ It's turning out to be a very cheap way to have my favorite drink in the house~~ but it certainly is a long process~~
