Japanese corn rice recipe
About Japanese corn rice
Japanese corn rice is one of the popular rice dishes in summer. It is simple to make, but surprisingly delicious. You can enjoy the crispy texture and sweetness of corn. When fresh corn is available, it is time to make corn rice.
The good thing is that it goes well with not only Japanese food, but also other Asian and Western foods. For example, you can serve it for barbecue. It’s very delicious to eat with grilled meat and vegetables.
Now, if you’d like to know about corn, the main ingredient this post, please find information about nutrition, health benefits, and downsides, from the links below.
Recipe tips
Since it is a popular dish, there are various recipes, and each one has a slightly different recipe. Here, I will share the recipes that I usually make.
Rice
You can make delicious corn rice with just Japanese rice (short-grain rice), but I mix it with glutinous rice. Mix ratio is 1: 1. (Japanese rice: glutinous rice = 1: 1) When mixed with glutinous rice, it becomes chewy and glossy, and it is delicious even when cooled. This is just a matter of preference, so if you like light taste, you can make it only with regular Japanese rice.
Cooking corn cob together
After cutting off the kernels, cook the remaining cob together with rice and kernels.
Why do you put in the remaining cob when you cook rice? Many people may have thought.
By cooking together with the cob, the umami soup stock comes out from it. So you can enjoy the sweet aroma and delicious taste of corn by cooking the cob together. Hence please do not throw away the remaining cob.
Seasoning
As for seasoning, if you can get really fresh sweet corn, salt alone is tasty enough. However, when it’s cooked, I add a little butter and soy sauce and mix. In Japan, it is popular to grill corn and season it with soy sauce and butter. Indeed, the soy sauce and butter go very well with the corn, so it’s very delicious to add a little of them to corn rice. Please adjust this to your liking.
Japanese corn rice
Equipment
- pot with a lid
Ingredients
- 1 cup Japanese rice (short grain rice) When mixing with glutinous rice, make 1 cup with 1/2 cup of Japanese rice and 1/2 cup of glutinous rice.
- 1 Fresh corn on the cob
- 1½ tablespoon Japanese sake or Chinese rice wine
- ½ teaspoon Salt
- 1 cup Water
- 10 ~15 gram Butter (optional)
- 1 teaspoon Japanese soy sauce (optional)
Instructions
- Put rice in a pot and add a little cold water and rub the grains together with your palms gently. The water becomes milky white. Drain milky white water immediately. Add fresh water and rinse rice and discard cloudy water. Repeat this process several times until the water is almost clear. Add fresh water and let the rice soak at least 30 minutes or until rice absorbed enough water and became completely white. When mixing glutinous rice, soak it in water for at least 1 hour, since glutinous rice takes more time to absorb water.
- Peel off the outer leaves of the corn, wash it, and cut it in half.
- Place the corn vertically on the cutting board. Stabilize by hand and cut off the kernels around the cob with a knife (while rotating the corn).
- Transfer the rice into a sieve and leave the rice for several minutes in order to drain water completely.
- Put the rice in a pot and add the same amount of water (1 cup). Add Japanese sake (1.5 tablespoon) and salt(1/2 teaspoon) and mix gently to dissolve. Spread the corn kernel on the rice and put the cob on it.
- Place a lid on the pot and bring it to a boil over medium high heat. Once it starts boiling, turn down the heat to low and cook 15 minutes further. Turn off the heat and leave the rice for 10-15 minutes. Open Lid, remove the cob and gently stir and toss the rice. If you like, you can add butter and soy sauce when stirring the rice.
Notes
It’s easy to make and delicious, so if you can get fresh corn, please make it. There is a link to recipes using rice below, so please try some of them if you like.
