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Popping rice


Baggy

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I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to get rice to pop. There seems to be a consensus on the following:

Moisture content 13.5-14%

Temperature around 450F (230-235C)

Around 25% oil by weight of rice

So far this is pretty much the same as popping candy. I can’t get a result with rice; I’m using long grain non-parboiled rice.

Any advice?

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  • 2 weeks later...
Thanks for the picture.  Any idea about the type of rice used or how it’s prepared?

Baggy,

Folks were bringing any which what to the guy, and he was working it up. The kit makes a really satisfying "Bang!" that you hear for blocks about.

Domestic Goddess has seen a lot of these (check post #94) in Korea, so I'd guess that any Calrose type would work perfectly well.

Plus, the ones in Korea come truck mounted, which'd be a way cool way to show up at parties.

Domestic, any comments?

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Does rice pop beyond puffing up a little? Like popcorn? Does anyone have a picture of that?

I 'pop' rice in a dry frying pan at high heat...it kind of puffs and doubles in size but it doesn't get really huge or explode like popcorn or anything.

They have a rice gun at a nearby asian market...shoots out plate sized puffed rice cakes. I don't think you could do that at home thought. At least not without the gun :smile:

Don't try to win over the haters. You're not the jackass whisperer."

Scott Stratten

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Here's a Lao tip.

Take your left over glutinous rice, the stuff that you didn't finish that day, and make flat cakes of it.

Put this out to dry in the sun for a day or two, so the moisture gets pulled out.

Then deep fry this and serve with a dipping sauce or some nice topping.

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From HowStuffWorks.com;

Another common puffing method for rice (as in Quaker Puffed Rice), corn (as in Sugar Pops) or wheat (as in Sugar Smacks) is called gun puffing. You cook/condition the grain to get the moisture right and pressurize it to something like 200 PSI. Then you release the pressure instantly. The pressure stored inside the kernel puffs the kernel when the pressure is released. If you have ever heard a cereal ad that talks about "shooting the cereal out of a gun," this is what they are talking about! Puffing the rice makes it spongy instead of crispy.

Edited by WHT (log)
Living hard will take its toll...
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There are two different puffed rice varieties that I have seen here in Korea - the extremely, dry crunchy kind which is basically the leftover rice stuck at the bottom of the rice cooker or rice pot. This Koreans would leave in the pot until the whote bottom gets hard, brown and crusty. Most of the times, they will take this out and dry it under the sun. I have seen these oval, dry disks of dried crusted rice sold in the weekly street market and people actually breaking off pieces and crunch them noisily while they go about the market. As for them actually cooking them either for soup or rice puffs, I haven't seen the technique yet.

There is a sweet puff rice snack sold in the groceries here that is the light, fluffy puffed kind. This is white kernels of rice shaped into a square-block, about 2 inches thick. I am guessing this is mass-produced in a factory.

Sorry for not really knowing what variety of rice they use. In the Philippines, we make puff rice out of PINIPIG - young, glutinous rice harvested before maturity and pounded flat. MarketManila has featured it in his blog - Pinipig puffs.

Today is market day here in Janghowon. Lemme see if I can snap pics of the crusty, dry rice disks and the square rice puff snack that I mentioned earlier - so you'll get a better idea of what I am talking about.

Doddie aka Domestic Goddess

"Nobody loves pork more than a Filipino"

eGFoodblog: Adobo and Fried Chicken in Korea

The dark side... my own blog: A Box of Jalapenos

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Okay, found the same truck and took a closer look.

gallery_48583_4432_107902.jpg

Here's a sample of his "explosion" products... You can see the puffed rice in the middle sacks. It costs about $3 per huge bag.

gallery_48583_4432_183285.jpg

Puffed corn bags and rice crackers....

gallery_48583_4432_14842.jpg

The sacks at the back of the truck that catches all the exploded goodies...

gallery_48583_4432_460762.jpg

Doddie aka Domestic Goddess

"Nobody loves pork more than a Filipino"

eGFoodblog: Adobo and Fried Chicken in Korea

The dark side... my own blog: A Box of Jalapenos

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These pictures are a great reference – I can see how puffed the rice can be and gives me something to aim for.

Do you think that glutinous rice is an important factor? I can always try popping with well-known glutinous types, like sushi rice.

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Here's another close-up of the puffed rice sack...

gallery_48583_3621_413692.jpg

With regards to the glutinous rice factor, I think it would contribute to the "puffiness" factor.

Doddie aka Domestic Goddess

"Nobody loves pork more than a Filipino"

eGFoodblog: Adobo and Fried Chicken in Korea

The dark side... my own blog: A Box of Jalapenos

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I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to get rice to pop.  There seems to be a consensus on the following:

Moisture content 13.5-14%

Temperature around 450F (230-235C)

Around 25% oil by weight of rice

So far this is pretty much the same as popping candy.  I can’t get a result with rice; I’m using long grain non-parboiled rice.

Any advice?

Baggy, are you talking about the moisture content of the rice here? How do you determine what its moisture content is?

I'm looking forward to the results of your experiments.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think I’m going to use standard moisture contents. I’ve tried taking a load of rice, drying it in the oven at 80C for a few hours and then measuring the weight loss. But the results are all over the shop and not really in keeping with standard nutritional tables. I don’t think it’s the measurement as I have scales with 0.1g accuracy. Maybe I'm not leaving it long enough or possibly the oven isn't hot enough?

I haven’t had time yet to try puffing rice again, but I intend to use standardised information (glutinous rice moisture content of 10.46%), add a little water to bring the moisture level up to 13.5% and leave it for a few days to equilibrate before I try next time.

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You could always buy one of these!

gallery_22892_4411_78007.jpg

Of course, you might be at risk of a raid by the ATF.

Domestic Goddess and I were just discussing this here  (it's near the bottom of the page)

Thanks for the photo. In Japan, such puffed rice is called "pon gashi". The machine used to make it is similar to the one in the photo.

Pon gashi ki (machine)

We use short-grain, Japonica rice.

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  • 10 months later...

For those living near Cherry Hill, NJ I have discovered that H-Mart supermarket on 70 and 295 have a puff rice machine in the store. They do plain and green tea dinner plate size puffed rice disks. I can't eat enough of these things. There is something very satisfying about eating something the size of a dinner plate...and then having 10 more ;)

Besides the puffed rice this place is an amazing Asian grocer. I haven't been to the other H-Mart locations to know if they also have the puff rice machines. Looks like they have a few other locations around the US.

http://www.hmart.com/

Next time I'm there I'll see if I can snap some video.

My soup looked like an above ground pool in a bad neighborhood.

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Isn't the mechanism of popping (as opposed to puffing) dependent on having an intact seed coat? Baggy, is puffing satisfactory, or is popping what you were looking for?

Cheers, Jen

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I must say that I’ve been somewhat distracted away from my rice puffing by the fabulous taste of gougères – now my technique is a little better I can get back to the rice…

iguana - it’s not especially the popping, but I suspect that if the moisture inside the rice grain isn’t contained in some way then it is probably that the grain won’t puff either. I guess the popping is just a consequence of the steam bursting out rather than leaking away. I’ll go for either.

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