Ogokbap (Five-Grain Rice)

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Rice cooker with mixed grain setting, or a 3-quart heavy pot with tight lid
• •Small saucepan for red beans
• •Fine-mesh strainer
• •Rice paddle

Instructions

1. 1

   Soak the grains

   Rinse the sweet rice until the water runs mostly clear, then soak it in cool water for 4 to 8 hours. Soak the black soybeans separately for 8 hours and the sorghum separately for 4 to 8 hours. Millet is small and weak-willed, so give it only 30 minutes, or it softens before the rice is done.

   Keep the soaking bowls separate. Each grain drinks at its own speed, and that is why ogokbap cooks evenly instead of turning into one sticky mass with hard beans hiding inside.
2. 2

   Parboil red beans

   Put the red beans in a small pot with 2 cups water and bring to a boil for 5 minutes. Drain and discard this first water. Red beans have a rough edge at the beginning; this first boil clears it so the final rice tastes clean.

3. 3

   Cook bean water

   Return the drained red beans to the pot with 4 cups fresh water. Simmer 25 to 30 minutes, until the beans are half-tender: you should be able to bite one, but it should not collapse. Drain over a bowl and save 2 1/2 cups of the red bean water. If you have less, add plain water to reach 2 1/2 cups. If you have more, keep only what you need.

4. 4

   Drain and mix

   Drain the sweet rice, black soybeans, sorghum, and millet very well. Put them in the rice cooker bowl or heavy pot with the half-cooked red beans. Stir the salt into the cooled red bean water, then pour it over the grains. The salt is not for making the rice salty; it wakes up the beans and keeps the whole bowl from tasting flat.

5. 5

   Cook the rice

   For a rice cooker, use the mixed grain or regular white rice setting. For a heavy pot, bring the grains and bean water to a boil over medium heat, cover tightly, lower the heat to the lowest flame, and cook 22 minutes. Do not lift the lid. Sweet rice needs trapped heat to cook through, and curiosity gives you a hard center.

6. 6

   Rest and fluff

   Let the cooked rice rest, covered, for 15 minutes. Then turn it gently from the bottom with a rice paddle, lifting rather than mashing, so the red beans stay whole and the millet does not smear. Taste one spoonful. It should be chewy, lightly salted, and deep from the bean water, with each grain still reading as itself.

7. 7

   Serve with namul

   Serve warm, with nine namul if you are keeping the Jeongwol Daeboreum table: dried radish greens, bracken, eggplant, zucchini, sweet potato stems, fernbrake, mushrooms, spinach, or whatever your household keeps. Season each namul alone in its own bowl and taste it before it meets the rice. A holiday table is not made by piling things together; it is made by letting each one speak clearly.

Chef Tips

• •If your red beans are old, they may need 10 more minutes before they reach half-tender. Do not cook them fully in the first pot, because they still have to survive the rice cooker without splitting.
• •Use sweet rice, not only regular short-grain rice. Ogokbap should have a sticky chew that gathers the beans and grains together, and plain rice alone will not give you that holiday texture.
• •A pressure rice cooker makes the most even pot, but an ordinary rice cooker is fine. 시대가 바뀌면 음식도 바뀌어야 해요. When times change, food must change too, and this is a vessel change, not a betrayal.
• •Serve leftovers as breakfast, pan-warmed with a little sesame oil until the bottom crisps lightly. Do not add sugar. This rice is meant to be nutty and plain, with the beans doing the talking.

Advance Preparation

• •Soak the black soybeans, sweet rice, and sorghum the night before. The millet can be rinsed and soaked while the red beans simmer.
• •The red beans can be parboiled and simmered 1 day ahead. Refrigerate the beans in their cooking liquid, then measure out 2 1/2 cups liquid when you are ready to cook.
• •Cooked ogokbap keeps 3 days refrigerated. Reheat covered with 1 tablespoon water per serving, or freeze in single portions for up to 1 month.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 230g)