Many people who watched my rice cake videos that use frozen rice flour and who haven’t used rice flour before asked me many questions about it.
Rice flour (ssalgaru) is flour made from finely milled rice. Koreans usually use one of two kinds of ssalgaru for making rice cakes: chapssalgaru (sweet rice flour) and maepssalgaru. Maepssalgaru is made with short grain rice and usually sold frozen to keep it moist.
Traditionally in Korea and even today, most neighborhoods have a local mill where you can get grains and seeds ground and pulverized into powders, grains, oils, liquids and even cakes. So you can bring your toasted sesame seeds to the mill, and they will make toasted sesame oil from them for you.
I live in New York City, and there are no local mills at all. Whenever I want to make rice cake, I have to buy frozen rice flour (naengdong mepssalgaru) from a Korean grocery store.
Some of my readers tell me:
“Maangchi, I really want to make your rice cake but I can’t find the rice flour you use.”
“The Korean grocery store I shop at doesn’t sell the rice flour.”
“How can I make this rice flour at home?”
I did some experiments and developed this method of making maepssalgaru at home with a food processor or coffee grinder. So now you can make homemade rice flour and your own rice cakes whenever you want them! I hope this helps!
Ingredients (makes 4 cups of rice flour)
- 1 pound (about 2 cups) of short grain rice
Directions
- Wash the rice. Put it in a bowl of water and scrub it by hand for a full 10 seconds. Rinse, stir, and drain. Repeat until the water drains clear.
- Soak in clean water overnight, or for 8 to 12 hours.
- Strain the rice. It should have expanded to about 3½ cups’ worth.
- Grind the rice finely with a coffee grinder or food processor.
- Sift the ground rice flour into a bowl. If any rice pieces are too big to sift, grind them again until they can be sifted.
- You’ll end up with about 4 cups of rice flour. Use it right away, or put it in a plastic bag and in the freezer until you need it.
I rinse water soo many times but water is still not perfectly clear. Can i keep it like that? And not wash it till it is perfectly clear?
Little late of a response but the water will still be cloudy but should be translucent so you can see the grains through it. Hope it helps
I made the rice flour with medium grain rice. The flour turned out great just the when I was making garateokk the mix was way too liquidy.
i was wondering do you have to dry the rice flour after soaking for 12 hours and if so how do you do it? thankyou
i was wondering do you have to dry the rice flour after soaking for 12 hours and if so how do you do it?
can i use basmeti rice for making rice flour
If you’re still wondering, no need to dry the flour. This type comes moist, therefore, if it’s store bought it’s always frozen and if you do it yourself, make sure to store in freezer for any that’s not used.
Hi maangchi,
I have tried your recipe. It do turn out nicely with the recipe. However I’m using the flour to make songpyeon and I do add hot water form a dough. But the dough I have make it become hardly to hold for a shape (trying to create a full moon shape for songpyeon or cute pumpkin shape) and become too soft and seem like melt when I’m steam it. May I know that is that because I have added too much water for it ?
Hi
Why need short grain rice?
Can use rice porridge from Basmati rice for kimchi (instead of the stated rice flour porridge)?
Love kimchi :)
Hi maangchi. Do we have to dry the rice after straining the water?
No need to dry it out. Just remove excess water as much as you can and grind it.
hello maangchi :)
i tried your recipe and is it okay if its not really “Pulver” rather more sandy?
Or do it really have to be like pulver?
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It looks good to me! You are supposed to cook it and pound it so I think it will be fine.
Hi everyone! Can I make mochi cakes (Chapssaltteok) using this flour? There are no Korean grocery stores in my country so my only option is to make one myself. Thanks for anyone who answers.
The best two rice flour thanks for the recipe
Hi Maangchi! I really like your recipe but I can’t find short grain rice in my town. Do you have a substitute for that?
Thank you.
If you live near a Walmart, they sell both Botan and Nishiki brands of rice. They are technically medium grain rice, but they are both sold as sushi rice and work well with the recipes here as far as I have been able to tell. They with either be in the rice section or the Asian foods section. Both are grown in California. You can also buy short grain on Amazon, but it’s much more expensive that way. I would give either of the ones at Walmart a try first.
If Maagchi has a better idea, I’m all ears. Since I live 75 miles from the nearest Asian grocer and 30+ miles from the nearest grocery store at all, I have used quite a few substitutes in the Asian recipes I like (of all kinds… Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai). From substituting vegetables I can actually get to finding good subs for spices and such. You do what you can when you live in the middle of nowhere and Amazon is sometimes too expensive for simple things.
Just noticed you are in Indonesia. Sorry about the Walmart comment as I don’t think it will help you. Good luck finding a good short grain rice in your area.
Check this out:
https://www.maangchi.com/shopping/indonesia
Even if none of the mentioned grocery stores is near your town: Maybe one of the chains has a shop near you?
And Sushi rice is the same, maybe you can find that?
Bye, Sanne.
Hi Maangchi!
Is there supposed to be a video for this recipe? It doesn’t seem to exist. :(
No there’s no video for this recipe, I may make one some day!
Hi.Its short grain rice is the same rice to make Kimbap ? I can’t find any short grain rice flour at supermarket I just found rice flour. So I decide to make it.There is short grain rice I always use to make Kimbap, Sumo. Please help me.
Look for sushi rice, please. Short grain rice is sushi rice. Good luck!
Just made the flour since I wanted to make tteok but they didn’t sell the flour or the rice cake at the local asian shop. I soaked sushi rice (a korean brand) overnight for 12 hours. I drained it and placed a paper towel underneath the stainer to extract more liquid. After leaving it for around 3 hours, the rice was dry enough to mill. I used my blender since it’s better than my food processor at grinding flour finely. I had to do around 4 batches and another batch at the end for all the big pieces that didn’t sift through. Made about half of a gallon ziploc bag! Delighted with the result.
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Hello Maangchi!
How long should we strain the rice for? :)
Thank you
Hi maangchi. Do we follow the same steps as the short grain rice flour if we want to do it with sweet rice flour?
yes, you can use this method with sweet rice (glutinous rice).
Thank you
Do I just add sugar or powdered sugar to make it sweet rice flour?
Sweet rice is glutinous rice which is chewier than usual short grain rice. Check this out, please. https://www.maangchi.com/ingredient/sweet-rice