Fried Rice Candy

Fried Rice Candy

　　Fried rice candy is yellowish-bright in color, with evenly sized grains resembling bee pupae. It has a moderate hardness, and is sweet and crispy. Its traditional production method is as follows:

　　 1. Ingredient selection. Choose glutinous rice grains that are large, sticky, and free of impurities. After sifting out broken grains, soak them overnight in clean water.

　　 2. Sugar mixing and steaming in a basket. Take out the soaked glutinous rice, drain it, place it on a bamboo tray, pour in an appropriate amount of crystallized sugar, mix thoroughly, then place it in a steamer. Steam over low heat until the rice is fully cooked, then take it out to dry.

　　 3. Pounding cooked rice. Mix the cooked rice—sifted of chaff, loosely separated, and slightly elastic—with an appropriate amount of peanut oil. Let it sit for 12 hours, then pound it in batches using a pestle and mortar. During pounding, continuously turn the bottom rice to the top until all the cooked rice is fully flattened.

　　 4. Popping rice. First, put an appropriate amount of fine sand into an iron wok, stir-fry over high heat until red-hot, then add an appropriate amount of flattened cooked rice and stir-fry together. Once all has popped into rice puffs, take it out, then continue adding more flattened cooked rice.

　　 5. Boiling sugar syrup. Use either brown sugar or white sugar. Add an appropriate amount of sugar according to the weight of the rice puffs, along with water, and put in some ginger pieces. Simmer slowly to concentrate the syrup. When the sugar syrup repeatedly forms white foam and can be picked up with chopsticks to form beads when dripped into cold water, it has reached the ideal concentration.

　　 6. Molding. First, pile rice puffs on a bamboo tray, then quickly pour the boiled sugar syrup over the pile. Immediately mix the rice puffs and syrup as quickly as possible, then press flat with a bamboo tube or similar tool. Once cooled and hardened, cut into small pieces, transfer to an earthenware bowl (or iron box), and seal for storage. From the 1970s to the 1980s after liberation, rice puff candy made using traditional methods gradually decreased. Due to the complexity of this process, there is now a type of popcorn machine that combines the soaking, steaming, flattening, and popping steps of traditional fried rice candy into one, producing larger popcorn puffs. Sticky rice can be used instead of glutinous rice, but it lacks the unique dry, fragrant, and crispy taste of traditional fried rice candy. After the 1980s, with the development of the commodity economy, every year before the Spring Festival, food businesses and individual vendors in Yulin City would produce large quantities of white scattered rice candy and fried rice candy following traditional methods for market release. Urban residents mostly bought them from the markets, but most rural families still made them by hand.