pongashi okoshi

I've been seeing a lot of this around in the shops and on television. In Hawaii, we call this puffed rice. In Japan, it is called pongashi. This one was a genmai(brown rice) puffed rice.

It is probably called pongashi because of the machine that puffs the rice. It looks like a cannon and when you release the pressure in the cannon it makes the sound "pon". (Actually, it doesn't sound cute like "pon" it sounds more like a "bang" and usually makes the people standing around the machine jump.)

When I started blogging and reading other blogs, it sparked me to try to cook or bake things from scratch. (Like instead of buying a ready-made salad dressing, I will try to make one from scratch. FYI: I haven't bought ready-made dressing in two years!) Since I am always willing to try a recipe at least once, I wanted to try making pongashi okoshi, or the Japanese version of a rice krispie treat.

I looked around on the internet and was surprised at how little information was out there. There were many sites that sold the finished product, but only one that gave a recipe.

So, I got all the ingredients together and tried the recipe.

Pongashi okoshi translated and adapted from a recipe on the Internet

1 cup mizuame (glucose/heavy syrup)
400g sugar
1 teaspoon salt
180cc water
1/4 cup oil
pongashi (puffed rice) teki-ryo (suitable amount)*

In a pot, heat all ingredients except the oil, stirring with a wooden spoon, let everything come to a boil. Scoop a little of the liquid, when the bubbles do not disappear on your spoon, add the oil.

Mix in the puffed rice and other items like nuts or arare (rice crackers).

Spread out to the desired thickness and cut before it cools completely.

NOTES: *One Japanese cooking instruction that I don't like is "teki-ryo" which means "a suitable amount". What does that mean? how would you know what is suitable? should I use 1 bag of puffed rice? 1 cup?

Anyway, I cut the recipe for the sugar mixture to one-fourth. I added 2 and 1/2 cups of the puffed rice and 3/4 cups of an arare/peanut mix. Since the okoshi is still on the soft side, I'm thinking that I should have either let the sugar mixture boil a little longer before adding in the oil or added more puffed rice and the arare/peanut mix or maybe both. On top of that, the weather was very humid yesterday. Still, it is addictingly delicious! I'll definitely have to try this again.