Songpyun - How to make it

Introduction
Recipe
More about Dduk



 

Introduction

All festivals include food. For Chooseok, a rice cake is the representative food. This is referred to as "songpyun". Each songpyun is shaped in a half-moon ,and each is stuffed with beans, chestnuts, or sesame seeds with honey. The size of each songpyun is two inches long by one inch wide. The most important thing in making Songpyun is when we steam the rice cakes, we layer them with pine needles. This gives the songpyun a pine scent. As the turkey is the traditional food for the American Thanksgiving, so songpyun is the traditional food for the Korean Chooseok. I heard the reason why the turkey is the representative food for Thanksgiving is because the first American pilgrims didn't have food. They saw wild turkeys, and they began to use the turkeys for their festival. Both traditional foods are very different. Yet, they are similar in one way. Both songpyun and turkey are stuffed with harvest items. Sharing these foods with family members stimulates a seasonal happiness in all. There are many kinds of Songpyun, which is made of different ingredients. Here are some pictures.

  Pumpkin Songpyun Green-tea Songpyun Black-tea Songpyun

Now we will give you a common recipe. Koreans eat songpyun as dessert during holidays. You can prepare them a day ahead, and store them in your refrigerator.

¢Ã Ingredients:

3 cups of rice flour, water, washed pine needles, sesame seed oil, 1 and 1/2 cups of roasted sesame seeds, 8 Tbs of sugar, salt, wet cloth (thicker than cheese cloth)

¢Ã Directions:

¨ç Add water into rice flour to make not-too-hard dough, and cover the dough with wet cloth.
¨è Mix roasted sesame seeds, sugar and little salt. This is filling.
¨é Make a little ball (1 inch) with rice dough, and use your thumb to make a hole. Put sesame seed filling (amount is up to you) into the hole and shove the rice dough to completely cover the filling. Make round shape or diamond shape. You made songpyun.
¨ê Boil water in a pot, and put a steamer over it. On steamer place wet cloth first, then put songpyuns and put pine needles over it. Finally, cover the steamer with another wet cloth and steam songpyuns for 30 ¢¦ 40 minuets.
¨ë When songpyuns become a bit transparent, you can turn off the stove and wash songpyuns with cold water. Brush them with sesame seed oil.

More story about "dduk"
It's supposed that the rice-growing ancestors found the way to make rice cake by chance in the process of cooking rice. Old records and unearthed remains show that the origin of dduk dates back to the Primitive Agricultural Age. According to the records, seeds were sown and fields were plowed for farming even before the 7¢¦8th century B.C. And various tools for grinding or powdering grains were very frequently found in the remains from that era. Rice growing is known to have begun somewhere between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Cooking stoves and earthenware resembling a steamer which were found around ancient shell mounds and dwellings led us to believe that steaming grains had developed into the making of rice cake.
Jang, Yeon kyung: 95730735@hanmail.net
Lee, Ji eun: euni1012@hanmail.net
Lee, Nam seok: lns0521@hanmail.net
Most recently updated on October 13, 2002