Fermented Sticky Rice - Jiu Niang - 酒釀

Because people keep asking me what this is. Jiu niang is fermented sticky rice. You can think of it as an alcoholic rice pudding. It can be used in cooking anywhere you would use rice wine. It’s usually eaten in a sweet soup, for dessert or breakfast.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiuniang - for a more in depth explanation.

Jiuniang is made with a special starter - called jiuqu or yeast balls. It is also called jiu bing - 酒餅. Or literally wine biscuit/cookie/cake. It’s not just yeast. It’s also has some sort of mold or fungal culture mixed in. Apparently, you can’t ferment rice with yeast alone. You can read all about it here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q%C5%AB
It looks like this, not the red stuff in the article. That’s for red rice wine. They look like pingpong balls. Some are larger some are smaller. The bag I got was filled with smaller packages of 3 balls each. Combined they looked about the size of the packs with 2 golf ball sized balls. But hey... it’s yeast, I figured if I underestimated it’s like bread, it would just have to sit around longer. Some of websites I’m seeing, (mainly Singapore and Malaysia) the jiubing, is literally cookie shaped. So they look like discs instead of balls.

yeast balls

I used my father’s recipe.

This recipe is pretty close. http://carolynjphillips.blogspot.com/2011/05/homemade-fermented-rice.html

This recipe has the best pictures:
http://userealbutter.com/2015/02/04/chinese-fermented-sweet-rice-jiu-niang-recipe/

From people who have used the rice cooker. It’s too wet and it makes the rice too mushy. I steamed the rice in metal steamers.

I find this site to be fairly reliable as well. https://thewoksoflife.com/2018/01/sweet-fermented-rice-jiu-niang/

Since my father’s instructions were a little lacking in detail. I sort of skimmed a bunch of other recipes to get a better feel for the procedure. I found the first link to be the most informative and closest to my father’s recipe. My father uses sugar and flour mixed with the ground up rice balls. She uses cornstarch instead. I think her method of SOAKING yeast balls to soften instead of grinding it up is probably easier. I threw the yeast balls and rock sugar in the spice grinder and ended up with a fine powder all over the kitchen. Read the comments and explanations by her and other people. Mostly, the thing I found the most useful was... TASTE IT, after a few days and see if it TASTES right.

And yes... it really is that easy.

Rinse the sticky rice well. about 3 or 4 times until it runs clear. Soak it overnight.
Steam it in cheesecloth lined steamers trays for 1 hour. Let cool. Put it in a clean container. Mix in the ground up flour, sugar, and yeast ball. Make a hole in the center of the rice. Add some water to rice. How much? I have no idea. I just put in enough to wet the rice. And I used the water I steamed the rice with since it had been boiling for an hour. I covered my plastic bucket with a piece of plastic wrap and put the lid on, but I did not seal the lid tightly.
I wrapped the bucket in a blanket and put it in the warmest room in the house. I checked every day for mold. The 2nd or 3rd day I smelled alcohol and saw liquid at the bottom of the hole of rice. The following day, I took a big metal spoon and mixed everything together. and tasted the spoon when I was done. SUCCESS! Left it for a few more days and put the whole bucket in the fridge.

The carolynphillips site says she only uses filtered and boiled water. I have no idea where she is located. I’m in NY and we have good water. I just washed and soaked the rice in tap water, since I knew I was going to STEAM IT FOR AN HOUR. If that’s not sterilized I don’t know how else to do so in home kitchen.

How to serve?

1. Eat it with a spoon straight.
2. Use it instead of cooking wine.
3. 酒釀湯圓湯 - Fermented rice sticky rice dumpling soup.
   1. For 1 serving.
   2. Boil about 1/2 cup water.
   3. Add a heaping tablespoon of jiuniang to the boiling water. Stir and wait for it to come to a boil again. Taste the soup. You might need more jiuniang, it depends on the batch. You may need to add sugar.
   4. add 2 or 3 sesame sticky rice dumplings. Boil according to the directions on the packaging.
   5. Crack 2 eggs into the mixture. Poach until yolk is soft but not raw.
   6. Serve.
   7. Most of use prefer to break one of the dumplings so the filling flavors to the soup. We also break one egg, so the soup gets all yolky and eat the other egg straight. The egg whites should take on the flavor of the jiuniang.
   8. If I am making more than one or 2 servings. I will scramble an egg into make “egg flowers” or egg drop soup type egg to enrichen the soup.
   9. Optional, osmanthus flowers can also be added to soup.
   10. Here is an online recipe, which is kind of similar. http://www.thehongkongcookery.com/2017/01/tong-yuan-dumplings-in-/osmanthus-sweet.html

3/3 batch - double batch of rice - 10lbs - added osmanthus flowers steeped in hot water to the rice at the same time as the yeast mixture.
Comments:

1. Dissolve the rock sugar in hot water or to the osmanthus flowers. It’s easier than trying to grind or beat the sugar in a bag with the yeast.
2. Rice fermenting in the same room as the kimchi from the previous day. Will this affect the fermentation? Flavor?
3. Added more water than last time. Hopefully it will be less pudding and more soupy.

3/4 day 1 update. Nothing seems to happening except the rice grains have swelled. The bucket definitely smells more peachy-apricoty. I wonder if it’s because the flowers have fermented as well or if the alcohol hopefully being produced is extracting more flavor from the flowers.

3/5 day 2 update.

There is liquid in the hole.

Tasted it. It's not quite there yet and not as sweet as the previous batch. It has a touch of bitterness at the end. Not sure if it's from the flowers.

I don't smell the osmanthus (peachy-apricoty notes) as much as yesterday. But I'm also more congested.

After I mixed everything together.

Eric Rhude says his batch:
The liquid smells slightly yeasty and is a bit sweet. the liquor is yellow and think. No white or black mold.

It has a yellowish hue like rice wine.

Mistress Jadiwiga says that the fruity favor is probably due to the flowers fermenting as well was the alcohol from the rice extracting those notes.

3/6 day 3 update - much wetter. Going to put it in the refrigerator. Not as sweet as the last batch.

3/21 update - it’s gotten sweeter the longer it’s been sitting in the fridge. it’s almost sickly sweet eating it straight.

Ready for the fridge

The dark specks are the osmanthus flowers.

The grains have pretty much disappeared.