Handmade Kiritanpo and Damako Traditional Rice Dumplings from Akita Prefecture

• 700 grams Regular Japanese rice or leftover cooked rice
• 1 Water
• 1 Salt

1. Rinse the rice and cook as usual.
2. In our house we make the dumplings whenever we have a lot of leftover rice.
3. Put the cooked rice in a sturdy plastic bag, and pound it over the bag with your hands, until the rice grains are partly smushed.
4. Combine water and salt.
5. The water should be a bit salty.
6. Moisten your hands with the salt water and form the dumplings.
7. See step 5 for kiritanpo, and step 6 for damako.
8. To make kiritanpo: Form the rice around disposable chopsticks.
9. Press and stretch the rice around the chopstick evenly.
10. This may be a bit difficult.
11. To make damako: Roll golf ball sized balls of rice between your palms.
12. You can coat them with katakuriko as I did here, or grill them.
13. Cook the kiritanpo in a frying pan until lightly browned on the surface.
14. If they burn a bit, it's ok.
15. When you eat them in a hot pot they will be very nutty and fragrant.
16. Finished!
17. Here are some extra tips:
18. You can freeze these as well.
19. Line on parchment paper, and store in a closed plastic container.
20. If you spread sweet miso paste on kiritanpo, you'll have an Akita specialty called Miso Kiritanpo.

regular japanese rice, water, salt

Taken from cookpad.com/us/recipes/169341-handmade-kiritanpo-and-damako-traditional-rice-dumplings-from-akita-prefecture (may not work)