Steaming Rice For Koji

[astroaurora]

Some friends and I will be making large amounts of koji for miso making. We have the spores from GEM culture for red miso making and about 25 pounds of dry short grain brown rice. My question is how to go about steaming such large quantities of rice? I have some large stock pots but I dont own any kind of steamer. I was thinking of maybe putting the rice in a clean pillow case and hanging that over the stock pot with boiling water in the bottom. Would that work? Would the steam be able to penetrate the pillow case efficiently enough? I would also love any other ideas on how to steam large amounts of rice or if you have done this let me know! This is my first time making koji and I want to be sure I get it right! Thanks!

[Tim Hall]

The steam may be able to penetrate the pillowcase, but it's going to depend on how well the steam is directed. In other words, if you just have a bag of rice hanging in your pot with room on the sides, the steam will probably just rise up and around it, escaping, and not pass through the rice. Path of least resistance.

You might look for a colander/strainer/sieve of the same diameter as your pot (most of these things come in fairly standard diameters, 12", 10", etc.), and lay some cheesecloth in it. A steamer insert for your stock pot, of course, would be ideal. You need to be able to hold the steam in to some degree, and not just let it pass right through and out of the pot.

*** There's another method you might try, but I'd consider it highly experimental. I've done it with wheat before, and it works well, but it may not work as well with rice.

Soak the grain for 18-24 hours. Bring a pot of water to a boil, then toss in the grain, let it come back up to a boil, only let it cook for a minute or two, then immediately toss it into a strainer. When it's in the strainer (a big strainer) give the grain a few tosses like you would flipping pancakes in a skillet.

What this does is it brings the grain up to "field capacity" with moisture, allows any mold, yeast, bacteria to come back to life, at which point they are highly vulnerable to heat. Then the grain only gets cooked long enough to heat it through to pasteurization without getting mushy or sticky. And because the grain will still be hot, any excess moisture quickly evaporates when you toss it in the strainer.

Again I've only done this successfully with wheat...your mileage may vary with other grains. If it does work though, it's less labor and energy consumption...just requires a little planning ahead.