Hi guys, here is Yi.
Fermented rice or called "jiu liang" is a crucial ingredient for many Chinese local snacks.
It adds extra flavour but also sometimes works like yeast in Chinese cuisine.
You can use the same method to brew rice wine or make a Chinese dessert.
Depends on the rice leaven you use, the recipe can be slightly different.
So just follow the instruction on the package.
Here I use 500g of sticky rice, soak them in cold water overnight or even 24 hours until
they're easily breakable with our fingertips.
I like to steam them with a steamer and a silicon sheet underneath for about 30 mins.
However, you can also just cook them with a bit of water.
The sticky rice can be quite hot after steaming.
A high temperature might kill our leaven, so try to cool it first before moving onto the next step.
Here I'm using a rice leaven which I bought on my last trip to China.
You can also use it to brew rice wine, which is somewhat a sweet rice drink with very little alcohol content.
Dissolve 4g of rice leaven into 370ml of lukewarm water.
Once the rice is cooled, pour in the leaven liquid straight into the rice and lose them slightly with a spatula.
Poke a little well in the middle, which will be filled with rice wine and help us determine
if the rice is successfully fermented.
Sprinkle a bit more leaven on the surface and cover the pot with a lid.
Let it rest in the temperature around 30-degrees c for about 36 hours.
After about 1 and half days we could already smell the wine.
We can use the liquid to make our Chinese old dough something very similar to sourdough.
The rice, on the other hand, is a crucial ingredient for many Chinese traditional desserts.
Store our fermented rice in a clean and sealable container in the fridge.
It will turn even sweeter after a couple of
days.
They can last for at least a month if they're correctly refrigerated.
