Making Mochi

Hi all,

Just after a bit of advice on making red bean paste Mochi.
I have seen plenty of guides online but the are all for those who are using flour instead of sweet rice.

Just wondered if any advice to making a good dough from sweet rice, I have a good quality rice cooker so also how long should I steam it for / how much water?

as regards the bean paste, all I could find locally are 200g tins of pre boiled beans how many tins am I going to need to make a decent amount of paste?

Hopefully somebody can give a little guidance. :-)

Making mochi is fun and my family does it every year, but it is very labor intensive to make from scratch.

Just wondered if any advice to making a good dough from sweet rice, I have a good quality rice cooker so also how long should I steam it for / how much water?

First wash and soak the rice overnight. Then you can just cook it as you would regular rice in your rice cooker. Once its cooked you have to pound it into a paste. In Japan they use a special mortar (usu) and mallet (kine), and its at least a two man job: one to pound and one to turn. You need to do it quickly before it cools, and try not to add too much water in the process. Once done its turned out onto a mochiko (mochi rice flour) covered surface where it is divided into smaller balls and allowed to cool.

There are special machines that you can buy that do the hard work for you. They look like a cross between a rice cooker and a bread maker. You still have to divide up the dough once pounded. Here's what they look like:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dgarden&field...

as regards the bean paste, all I could find locally are 200g tins of pre boiled beans how many tins am I going to need to make a decent amount of paste?

Those are the small tins about the size of a tunafish can right? I use a large spoonful per mochi, so one can would make me maybe 4-6 mochi.