[Korean Recipes] Sweet Crunchy Rice Balls

I recently started participating in blog events and they are a whole lot of fun! Apart from discovering great new blogs, making new friends and learning a lot about food and photography, I really enjoy the challenge of creating something new! For somebody like me who follows no recipes and never plans what to cook it’s a different experience to plan and create a recipe particularly for a blog event.

I wanted to participate in the Rice Blog Hop, Junia of Mis Pensamientos’s brainchild. The month is almost coming to an end but I never got around to blogging a rice recipe! Now you might ask what’s so hard about a rice recipe… it’s really not. For somebody like me who eats rice every single day it’s not hard to blog just one recipe at all. But I wanted to create something unique for the event. I didn’t want to blog my every day rice dish.

Finally today I could actually create a rice recipe which I am happy about. It’s healthy, easy and delicious, all of which I consider ‘my kind’!

Here’s a recipe of sweet crunchy hard snack balls which are made out of just 3 ingredients! It has flattened red rice, organic black jaggery and a tiny hint of cardamom. It comes together really fast, takes 5 to 10 minutes to make. It’s a great snack if you have a sweet tooth as it’s almost oil/fat free!

These rice balls are chewy, sticky and crunchy. Tastes of earthy red rice with an intense caramel-like sweetness of jaggery. They are quite nutritious as I have used red rice flakes and organic jaggery. It might work with white flattened rice too provided the rice flakes are think and not paper thin. The beautiful black colour comes from the black jaggery which you will not have if you use regular jaggery. These are also vegan and gluten free!

organic black jaggery

Believe me… this is delicious just by itslef!!

flattened red rice

Green cardamom

3 ingredients and 10 minutes is what it takes!!

You have vegan, gluten free, chewy, sticky and crunchy rice balls!

Perfect healthy snack!

Ingredients:

1 cup flattened red rice
¾ cup organic black jaggery
¼ cup water
1 pod cardamom
1 tsp coconut oil

Instruction:

Place the jaggery and water in a heavy bottomed pan and slowly bring it to a boil. Peel the cardamom pod and crush the black seeds lightly. Add it to the jaggery and let it simmer.

While the jaggery syrup is getting ready, dry roast the flattened rice till it’s crisp.

When the jaggery syrup gets slightly thick add the flattened rice to it. Mix till it’s combined well. Continue to cook it in low flame till it all comes together.

Turn off the heat and let it cool for a minute or two. Grease your hands well with coconut oil. Make sure you have enough oil to prevent the hot mixture from sticking to your hands. The mixture will be extremely hot so take care not to burn yourself. Scoop a spoonful of the hot mixture and place it on your palm and quickly roll it into a ball. Place it on a greased plate. Continue to do this till you have rolled all of it into balls. Make sure you do this before the mixture cools down completely as it’ll harden.

Let the rice balls come down to the room temperature and enjoy them for up to a week stored in an airtight container.

Soak the pan in water for all the jaggery stuck to it to come out before you clean it.

This recipe and image sources are referred in website: Lovefoodeat.com. Thanks so much!