🇯🇵 How to Make Mochi

Craving Mochi? On FoodNeverComes the food never actually comes — so here's how to make real Mochi at home, in about 30 min, with stuff you probably already have.

🛒 Ingredients

Tap ingredients to tick them off as you shop or cook ✔️

• 1 cup (120g) glutinous rice flour (mochiko/shiratamako — regular rice flour will NOT work)
• ¾ cup water + 3 tbsp sugar
• ½ cup cornstarch, toasted 1 min in a dry pan (for dusting)
• Filling: red bean paste rolled into 8 balls, or 8 small scoops of ice cream frozen HARD

👩‍🍳 Method

1. If doing ice cream: scoop 8 small balls onto a tray and freeze until rock solid, at least 1 hour. Soft ice cream is game over.
2. Whisk rice flour, water and sugar smooth in a microwave-safe bowl. Cover loosely.
3. Microwave 1 min, stir with a wet spatula, 1 min more, stir again — it's done when translucent, glossy and stretchy like slime you'd actually want to eat.
4. Tip it onto a surface generously dusted with the toasted cornstarch. Dust the top too. Let it cool 5 min — it's molten glue at first.
5. Divide into 8, flatten each into a palm-size disc with dusted hands, wrap around a filling ball and pinch sealed. Work fast with ice cream.
6. Dust off the excess starch. Red bean ones keep a day at room temp; ice cream ones go back in the freezer 30 min and are best eaten slightly softened, 5 min out.