When I was young, during the Chinese New Year, I often saw adults steaming the japonica rice, pounding it in a stone mortar, and then making handmade rice cakes. No one usually uses these tools for making handmade rice cakes, and they only come out when the Chinese New Year is approaching. Now I will introduce to you how to make them and pictures of the tools.

1. Soaking japonica rice: According to the amount required, soak the rice and water in a tank for seven days and seven nights. The water needs to be changed once in the middle until the rice grains are evenly saturated with moisture.

2. Grinding: (Water mill) Grinding powder on a stone mill requires two to three people, one person to grind and one or two people to push the grinder. The grinder keeps adding rice and water to make the grinding smooth and the rice flour cells.

3. Squeeze water: Put the water-milled powder in a cloth bag, tie the mouth of the bag tightly, use pure natural grass ash to absorb the water in the bag, and replace the water-absorbed grass ash with dry one. Grass ash until almost all the water in the bag is absorbed.

4. Powdering: Pour the water-squeezed rice flour into a bamboo sieve and sieve it, and crush the lumpy dry flour with your hands. The holes of the bamboo sieve are about 0.5 cm square. The sifted flour is about small and uniform, and the quality is ready for steaming the flour.

5. Steamed powder: Pour the sifted powder into the steaming bucket and start steaming. The steaming barrel is a round barrel made of fir boards, with a steaming umbrella at the bottom. The steamed umbrella is an umbrella-shaped base made of moso bamboo strips and loofah, which helps the steam in the hot pot rise and expand the contact surface, so that the noodles can be fully and evenly heated.

6. Rice flour (powder): Rice flour is a technical job. If it is pounded too much, it will become hard. If it is not pounded enough, it will become sticky. The head is pounded. The person next to him cooperated tacitly. His hands soaked in water quickly counted the powder stuck to the head of the stone pound, and quickly turned the powder in the stone mortar. Generally, a large stone mortar can hold 80 kilograms of powder, and the pounding head and wooden handle weigh 20 kilograms. The small stone mortar can hold 40 kilograms of powder, and the pounding head and wooden handle weigh 12 kilograms.

7. Make rice cakes: Put the dough that has been pounded thoroughly in the stone pound onto the paving board for making rice cakes, and enter the process of making rice cakes. Place a plate made of yellow film and vegetable oil on the paving board. The cake is used to wipe hands when making rice cakes to prevent rice flour from sticking to hands. Before making rice cakes, the dough should be kneaded to make it soft and soft. Traditionally, printing plates are used when making rice cakes. The front and back of the rice cakes are printed with auspicious patterns. People in rural areas make rice cakes into the shapes of ingots, pig heads (pig heads) and fish (more than enough every year). The red dots are all for good luck, reflecting the custom of pursuing peace and harmony in the hair. When making rice cakes, a pot of pickled bamboo shoots, bean curd sugar, sesame powder mixed with white sugar is also placed on the floor. Choose your own taste, make stuffing and knead it into cake balls. Old and young eat it with gusto, full of New Year flavor.