How To Make Homemade Tikoy With a Food Steamer

How can Tikoy be made with a food steamer?

1. Gather Your Ingredients
2. Prepare Basic Sweet Tikoy
3. Fry Tikoy For Eating

  Every year, around the second week of January, you may start seeing bakeries selling boxes of colorful ready-to-fry Tikoy dishes of various sizes. Tikoy, as it is popularly referred to as, is also called sweet steamed cake in English and Nian Gao in Chinese. It is made of glutinous rice coated in egg. To celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year, choose to make your own Tikoy at the comfort of your home using basic ingredients and kitchen equipment that you already own. Pan-fry your glutinous rice with an electric kitchen stove to produce the best and best-tasting Tikoy.  

Gather Your Ingredients

Glutinous rice is the main ingredient of Tikoy. This kind of rice is short-grained and plumper than normal rice grains. They appear milky white with a highly polished surface. Glutinous rice is commonly packaged in plastic and labeled as “sweet rice”. This label refers to how the rice is used for making confections and sweet treats. Here are the ingredients you will need to make your own homemade Tikoy:

• 2.5 cups or 590 milligrams of glutinous rice
• 1 cup or 240 milligrams of sugar
• 1.75 cups or 410 milligrams of water
• 2 teaspoons or 9.9 milligrams of toasted sesame seeds, optional
• 0.5 cups or 120 milligrams of dates or raisins, optional
• Cooking oil
• 1 egg

Ingredients like toasted sesame seeds and dates or raisins are flavor enhancers. You can either include them in the list of ingredients or replace them with other ingredients of our choice. Take note, replacing ingredients may change the entire texture of the Tikoy recipe, especially if liquid ingredients are added as an alternative.  

Prepare Basic Sweet Tikoy

Cooking the Tikoy with the use of a food steamer or multi-cooker is a technique that allows the glutinous rice to maintain its micronutrients. Here is an easy step-by-step instruction on how to make the best Tikoy:

1. Combine water and sugar in a large bowl. Once the sugar is completely dissolved, gradually stir in the glutinous rice. Continue stirring until the grains are fully soaked in water. At this point, you can add sugar depending on your taste preference.
2. Grease the cooking pan, tray, or pot with oil to prevent the rice from sticking on the bottom. Pre-heat the food steamer for 3 minutes.
3. Pour the rice mixture into the greased cookware. Even the mixture using a spoon or ladle to produce a flat surface. Sprinkle the sesame seeds on top of the mixture.
4. Prevent the water produced by the steam from falling directly on the mixture by covering the surface of the rice mixture with cheesecloth or plastic wrap.
5. Once the cheesecloth or cover is fixed in place, steam the mixture over medium heat and leave to cook. Typically it takes 45 minutes to an hour for the rice to be relatively firm.
6. Constantly check on the rice and poke the surface to know whether it has firmed or if it needs to be steamed for a couple more minutes. Once the surface has firmed up, take it out of the pan and leave it to air dry.
7. Wrap the rice dish in wax paper or cling wrap. Refrigerate for at least five hours or overnight. The process of refrigeration allows the rice dish to take a more solid form.

 

Frying Tikoy For Eating

Tikoy kept in the refrigerator for a certain number of days may not be best consumed when warmed through the microwave oven. To get the best tasting results, fry the Tikoy using your electric kitchen stove. With egg and cooking oil, you can produce a sumptuous fried Tikoy perfect for merienda snacks. Here is a quick step-by-step pan-frying process to achieve the right texture of fried Tikoy.

1. Slice the Tikoy into small pieces depending on the size you want it to be. For easier and faster frying, cut the Tikoy into smaller or thinner pieces.
2. Beat an egg into a large bowl, enough to fit the pieces of Tikoy. Take note, glutinous rice absorbs liquid rapidly. With this, keep eggs within reach so you can easily beat another in case one egg is not enough. If you have plenty of Tikoy pieces to cook, use more than one egg.
3. Heat the cooking oil in a frying pan over medium heat. The oil must cover at least half of the height of the Tikoy pieces. Make sure to use neutral cooking oil or flavorless oil such as vegetable oil or canola.
4. Dip each Tikoy piece into a bowl of the beaten egg. Ensure that each piece is completely coated with the egg mixture. Dip each piece for only 3 seconds to prevent it from absorbing too much.
5. Fry the Tikoy on each side for 2 minutes or until the egg has been cooked. You will know the Tikoy is cooked once the pieces change its color to light brown.
6. Use paper towels to wipe off the excessive amount of oil and enjoy!

 

Key Takeaway

Celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year with homemade Tikoy to attract prosperity and money. Tikoy is one of the traditional foods from the Chinese that eventually made its way into the hearts and stomachs of every Filipino. To achieve the perfect texture and form, make sure to use an electric kitchen stove when pan-frying and a food steamer when you want it warmed.