Songpyeon

Half-moons of scalded rice dough shaped round a sesame filling and then steamed, on pine needles if you have them.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains honey.

Ingredients

For the dough

• 300 g glutinous rice flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• about 180 ml boiling water

For the filling

• 80 g toasted sesame seeds, crushed
• 3 tablespoons honey or rice syrup
• 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
• a pinch of salt

To steam

• a handful of pine needles, rinsed, if you can get them
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil

Method

1. THE DOUGH IS SCALDED WITH BOILING WATER, NOT MIXED WITH COLD. Glutinous rice flour has no gluten at all, so there is nothing to develop by kneading -- the only thing holding it together is gelatinised starch, and that needs boiling water. Mixed with cold or even warm water it will crumble no matter how long it is worked, and nothing later recovers it.
2. SO IT IS KNEADED WHILE ALMOST TOO HOT TO HOLD, which is uncomfortable and is the job. Work it with a wooden spoon for the first minute, then by hand as soon as you can bear it, for a good five minutes, until it is smooth and stretches slightly instead of cracking.
3. THE WATER GOES IN BY FEEL, NOT BY MEASUREMENT. How much depends on the flour, so it is added a few tablespoons at a time to a dough that holds a thumbprint without cracking at the edge.
4. IT IS STEAMED AFTER SHAPING, which is what separates it from the chapssaltteok on this site -- there the dough is steamed first and pounded, and is shaped when already cooked. Here the shaped half-moons go into the steamer raw, so the shaping has to survive twenty minutes of steam: thin walls split and the filling leaks out.
5. THE DOUGH IS KEPT UNDER A DAMP CLOTH THE WHOLE TIME. It skins over within two or three minutes of being uncovered, and a skinned piece will not seal.
6. PINE NEEDLES ARE NOT DECORATION but they are not essential either, and the page says both: they scent the dough faintly and keep the pieces off the cloth. Without them, oil the steamer paper.
7. Filling: sesame seeds crushed roughly, mixed with the honey, sugar and salt to a thick paste. Chilled 20 minutes so it can be handled.
8. Rice flour and salt in a bowl. The boiling water added a few tablespoons at a time, stirred with a spoon.
9. Kneaded HOT, 5 minutes, until smooth and just slightly stretchy. Covered with a damp cloth.
10. Divided into about 20 pieces, kept covered.
11. Each piece flattened in the palm to a 6 cm disc, half a teaspoon of filling placed in the middle, and the edges brought together and pinched into a half-moon with a ridged seam.
12. Set on rinsed pine needles, or oiled paper, in a steamer basket, not touching.
13. Steamed over a hard boil 20 MINUTES, until translucent and glossy.
14. Brushed at once with sesame oil, which stops them sticking to each other as they cool. Eaten the same day -- refrigerated they go hard and chalky overnight.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under South Korea · All recipes