Mochi is a Japanese Food. For the pre-Columbian Peruvian culture, see Moche; for the drink, see mocha.

Mochi (餅) is a food prepared from rice and used as an ingredient in several Japanese recipes.

How mochi is cooked:

1. Prepare steamed sticky rice;
2. Either pound it in a traditional usu mortar or process it with a modern electric machine; and
3. Form it into various shapes (usually a circle or square).

While eaten year-round, mochi is a traditional food for the Japanese New Year and commonly sold and eaten at that time. Mochi is very sticky; every year after the new year, it is reported in the media how many people die from choking on it.

Popular dishes with mochi

• Zoni, a soup containing rice cakes. Zoni is also eaten on New Year's Day. In addition to mochi, zoni contains vegetables like honeywort , carrot, and red and white colored boiled kamaboko.
• Yaki-mochi , a grilled rice cake. After the rice cake is grilled, put soy sauce and wrap a toasted laver (nori) around the cake.
• Shiruko, a sweet azuki bean soup with pieces of rice cake. In winter, Japanese people often eat it to warm themselves.
• Daifuku, a soft rice cake stuffed with sweet filling, for example an - a sweetened bean jam.
• Mochi ice cream, small balls of ice cream wrapped inside a mochi covering. This is very popular in California.

Other Facts

• In Japanese folk tradition, rabbits living on the Moon produce mochi in the traditional method with (rabbit-sized) mallets and mortars, although the method they use to export it to Earth remains a mystery.

• Mochi is also the name of a monster type and character in the game and TV series Monster Rancher. It is so named for its physical resemblance to a type of mochi pastry.

See also

• kakemochi