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Gangjeong (Puffed Glutinous Rice Confection)

Name: Gangjeong (Puffed Glutinous Rice Confection)
Prep time: 2 h
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 3 h
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: Korean
Ingredients: 400 g glutinous rice; 3 tbsp cheongju or other clear rice wine; 3 tbsp honey; as needed starch; 1.5 L neutral oil; 150 ml honey or jocheong (rice syrup); 100 g popped rice

A Korean confection: glutinous rice soaked four or five days, ground, mixed with rice wine and honey, steamed and kneaded, cut into 1cm-thick pieces and dried hard in the shade, then puffed in oil. The pieces are too thick to fry in one go, so they sit in room-temperature oil, swell slowly in warm oil, and only once they have reached their size go into hot oil to set. Finished with honey and a coat of popped rice or sesame.

Ingredients

8servings

Dough
glutinous rice400 g
cheongju or other clear rice wine3 tbsp
honey3 tbsp
starch · potato or corn, for rolling as needed
Frying
neutral oil · split between the cool soak and the fryer1.5 L
To finish
honey or jocheong (rice syrup)150 ml
popped rice · or toasted sesame, pine-nut powder, soybean powder100 g

Steps

Wash the glutinous rice and soak it in plenty of water for four to five days, changing the water once a day. The water turns sour-smelling as the days go on, so rinse the rice each time you change it.
Rinse the soaked rice several times, drain it, and have it milled fine or grind it fine in a blender, then sieve it.
Rub the rice wine and honey evenly through the flour. Spread it in a steamer lined with a wet cloth and steam 30 minutes, until it is translucent right to the middle.
⏲ 30 min
Turn the steamed dough into a bowl while it is hot and beat it with a pestle or a sturdy spatula until it is smooth and glossy.
⏲ 5 min
On a board dusted with starch, roll it 1cm thick. Once the steam is off, cut it into pieces 3-4cm long and 1.5-2cm wide.
Spread them out in an airy, shaded place and dry them, turning once a day, until they are hard right through. This takes several days. Snap one: if the middle is soft, they are not ready.
Submerge the dried pieces in room-temperature oil for 10 minutes.
⏲ 10 min
Warm the frying oil to about 100°C and move the pieces into it. Roll and press them gently with a spatula and leave them until they have swollen three or four times over. Do not hurry this.
⏲ 5 min
Once they are fully puffed, raise the oil to 150-160°C and fry until the outside is firm and only just coloured. Lift out and drain well.
⏲ 1 min 30 sec
Warm the honey or jocheong, roll the pieces in it, then coat them thickly in popped rice or sesame. Cool completely and keep airtight.

Variations

When it is eaten: at weddings, ancestral rites and New Year. It takes so long to make that it was once a confection of well-off households.
Not dakgangjeong. The word was borrowed for fried chicken in a sticky glaze; here gangjeong is a rice confection.
The other end of hangwa: dasik presses powder into a mould with neither water nor heat; gangjeong steams a dough, dries it and puffs it in oil.

More detail and the reasons why (2)

It is more often sold as yugwa. Yugwa is the name for the whole family of fried glutinous-rice confections, and gangjeong is one branch of it. The same dough made flat and wide is sanja; cut small, it is yeonsagwa.
The coating: popped rice is the commonest; black or white sesame, pine-nut powder, soybean powder, pine pollen and cinnamon are all used and give the piece its name (sesame gangjeong, pine-nut gangjeong). Coloured popped rice turns up too.

Tips

Why roll and press them. In the warm oil a piece starts swelling from one end and wants to curl. Rolling and pressing it with a spatula makes it swell evenly and straight.
Do not shorten the soak. Four to five days is part of the method. Change the water daily and rinse well before grinding.
Steam, then beat. Beating the steamed dough smooth while it is hot gives the dried pieces an even grain. Cold, it will not beat.
The honey is the glue. Warmed honey, or jocheong (yeot stopped before it sets), holds the popped rice. Too hot and the coating slides off; too cool and it will not spread.
Damp is the enemy. Finished gangjeong takes up moisture from the air and goes soft. Cool completely and seal straight away. The general rules of the fryer are in deep frying.

More detail and the reasons why (3)

It puffs for the same reason bugak does. The glutinous-rice starch is cooked first (steamed), then dried, then put in oil. As bugak puts it: "The starch was cooked and then dried, so the moment it meets oil the little water left inside it turns to steam all at once and blows the film into a foam."
The difference is thickness. Bugak insists on a thin film: "Thicker and only the surface dries while the inside stays soft, so it toughens in the oil instead of puffing." Gangjeong is 1cm thick on purpose, so two things change. The first is the drying: days in the shade, turned daily, until the pieces are dry right through. Snap one; a soft middle is exactly the failure bugak describes.
The second is three oil temperatures. Bugak notes: "At 180C it colours before it puffs." That is true of a thin film; put a thick piece straight into hot oil and the outside sets before the inside has room to swell. So the pieces soak in room-temperature oil first, then sit in warm oil where they soften and swell slowly, and only once they have reached full size does hot oil fix that size. Colour at the last stage does not matter, because the puffing is already done.