The unique indigredient
Not being specialities of any land, but in each locality, the rice crackers – Hanoi street food – contain a very strange taste. The way to make pop rice is quite special, and in the first time you see it you will be surprised by the funny sound like firecrackers.
But then the fragrance of sticky rice makes the doubt in your mind disappear. In any area, to have the grain of white, elongated, crispy pop rice, it is important to choose good sticky rice. The Northwest is famous for nep nuong glutinous rice, and the plain has nothing better the nep cai hoa vang sticky rice.
Making pop rice is also quite strange. People do not put rice on a milling machine like the way to make the long rice sticks usually found in the countryside but make glutinous rice “pop” in a round cylinder with the pressure gauge at a top and the other end with a lid closed to create heat cooked glutinous rice inside. Each “block of pop rice” contains about 1.5 to 3 kg of rice.
“The pop rice block” is rotated in about six to eight minutes to create a batch of pop rice.
When the pressure gauge has risen to a few hundred degrees Celsius, signaling the pop rice batch is completed. In a quick, clever and careful move, the pop rice maker kicks the block, using a large piece of wood to smash the locking lid. Immediately, an explosion sound makes many people on Hanoi street food walking tour startled, and then they will see a “rain” of pop rice falling down a basket or plastic sheets.
Making rice cracker
The pop rice – Hanoi traditional food – is completed. From that, people will make pop rice crackers in their own way of processing. To create the pop rice crackers with the eye-catching golden color and fragrant flavor, people often take molasse to cook. If you do not have molasse, you can use sugar, in which, red sugar is usually the better choice, because it will make the pop rice cake more flavorful.
Cane molasses when cooked is so iridescent with amber color. People will more a little bit of ginger so that the aroma is very seductive. You just toss the pop rice into the mixture of molasses, stir until the mixture of molasses and pop rice are blended together, a delicious batch of pop rice crackers has been formed. The cake is usually rectangular, when the cake become gradually cool down and link to each other into a block, people just cut it into the pieces of cake, put into plastic bags to keep the fragrance.
Rice crackers in other places
Similar to the traditional way to make pop rice crackers, Tay and Nung ethnic people also make their rice crackers with enchanting flavor. The way to make rice crackers of the Nung, Tay in Binh Phuoc quite simple, people give cane sugar into the pan to melt it. Usually, about 1 kg of sugar will be mixed with 1 kg pop rice. The sugar melts into molasse for about 10 minutes, then people will put the pop rice into the molasse and quickly stirred so that the rice and the molasse mixed together.
When the two mixtures are still hot, the maker put the mixture into a wooden mold with a thickness of about 3cm. The rice cake after the oven has the smell of sticky rice, the scent of the sugar, very crunchy, sweet and extremely delicious. That is the traditional cake of the Tay, Nung people on the occasion of the new year.
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With the processing mentioned above, but people in Bac Giang add ginger and mix it in rice to enhance the aromatic smell. This dish is often popular in the countryside of Bac Giang, turn into a typical Tet cake for guests each visit.