Sweet Rice Nectar - Shikhye
Cooking Time : 7 hrs
Total Calories : 1,900 kcal
Serving Size : 15
Korean tradition dictates that shikhye, a slightly fermented rice nectar should be drunk during the winter. But nowadays it can be found all the year round. The key to its flavor is a good quality barley malt which gives it much sweetness.
Ingredients
Barley malt, dried and pounded barley germ (yotkirum) : 14 oz (400 g, available in Korean stores)
Rice : 1 3/4 lbs (800 g)
Sugar and ginger to taste
Pine nuts
Water
1. Put the malt in a big bowl with 4 liters of water and scrub with the hands to make enough powder for about 5 minutes.
2. Sieve and discard the remnant and keep still the water for about 30 minutes until clean water is produced.
3. Hard-boil the rice. Pour the clean water above mentioned onto the hard-boiled rice fully; ferment for about 5~6 hours until 3~5 grains of the rice float to the top of the water in an electric rice cooker(of ‘warm’ button).
4. Put together the fermented and the clean water left over into a big kettle or pot and add sugar and ginger to taste; boil for 15~20 minutes.
5. Serve cold shikhye with some of the cooked rice grains and pine nuts floating in it.
