Mochi

Pounded, not made from flour

Traditional mochi is made from mochigome — short-grain glutinous (sweet) rice — that’s been steamed, then pounded with heavy wooden mallets in a mortar (usu) until the individual rice grains break down into a smooth, sticky, almost taffy-like mass. The pounding is rhythmic, often done by two people: one wields the mallet, the other quickly turns and wets the dough between strikes.

Modern home cooks and bakeries sometimes use mochiko flour (sweet-rice flour) instead, mixing it with water and steaming it — easier but with a slightly different texture.

Three main forms

• Plain mochi — rounded into balls or cut into squares; eaten grilled, in soup, or rolled in soybean flour.
• Daifuku — round mochi stuffed with sweet red bean paste (anko) or other fillings.
• Mochi ice cream — small balls of ice cream wrapped in thin sheets of mochi; modern Japanese-American invention popularized in the 1990s.

A New Year’s tradition

Mochi-pounding (mochitsuki) is a centerpiece of Japanese New Year preparation. Families and neighborhoods gather in late December to pound mochi for the new year’s table, especially for kagami mochi — stacked rice cakes displayed as a household decoration through early January, then eaten in soup.

The choking warning

Mochi causes a small but real number of choking deaths in Japan every New Year — typically among elderly people for whom the dense, elastic texture is hard to chew. Japanese government health advisories specifically warn about the risk during the holiday. The tradition continues anyway; mochi is too central to the season to skip.