Favorite drink for dessert

Drinking a bowl of sweet and cool sikhye after eating a large meal during a holiday or feast is good for dessert and helps digestion. Sikhye has simple ingredients and is easy to make, but it takes a lot of time.

If you cook rice with non-glutinous or glutinous rice and dissolve it in malt water and leave it warm overnight, the rice grains will dry out and float to the top. As the rice ripens due to the action of the saccharification enzyme contained in the malt, the unique sweetness and aroma of malt is created. When the rice is dry, add sugar or honey, boil it once, cool it down, and eat it cold. When boiling, add sliced ​​ginger or citron juice to enhance the aroma and taste. When serving sikhye, if you float the grains of rice that were set aside properly, and pine nuts, jujube shreds, or bright red pomegranate seeds, it tastes good, but it is much more elegant.

Sikhye looks more delicious when served in a neat bowl. Also, the color of the broth and rice grains are important. If the rice grains start to float while fermenting the rice, take it out with a net or cook, rinse it in cold water, and keep it cold. The more rice grains, the sweeter the sweetness and the whiter the color. Of course, the malt must be clean, and the malt must be brewed and used only with the upper water. Rice grains turn black when sediment enters. These days, most of the grains of sikhye in cans look yellow and messy.

Just because the broth is clear doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good. To make Sikhye delicious, malt must be good above all else, and the temperature and time to ferment are important. Grind well-grown malt into powder, rub it in water, soak it, and use the top water. Malt is used a lot in Korea, and it is widely used in sikhye, taffy, red pepper paste, rice cake, and alcohol.

Now, if you put the grains of rice in a thermal rice cooker and leave them for about 6-7 hours, they will dry out enough, so you can do it very easily. In the past, several measures were needed, such as wrapping a blanket in a hot room. In order for the grains of rice to dry, the temperature must be maintained at 50~60℃. If it is kept at a temperature lower than this for a long time, it will rest before ripening, and if it is too high, the enzyme action will stop and it will not ripen at all.
[Naver Encyclopedia of Knowledge] Sikhye (100 Foods We Really Need to Know 1, 1st edition 1998, 10th printing 2011., Han Bok-jin, Han Bok-ryeo, Hwang Hye-seong)