Kankoro Mochi Making

Kankoro Mochi making has been popular in Kuroshima, too.

Method

The word ‘Kankoro’ is a dialect of the Goto islands.
Sweet potatoes and cut in a dedicated potato with (handmade cut tool), and boiled in a kettle.
After sweet potatoes are cut with a special hand-made cutter, they are boiled in a cauldron.
Then they are sun-dried on wooden racks for a couple of days.

Kankoro Mochi Making

After a while dried sweet potatoes are washed with hot water, they are put into a steamer.

The steamed Kankoro is mixed with steamed glutinous rice.
Then the mixture is put into a mixer.

Being squeezed from the mixer, the fresh Kankoro Rice Cake is formed into an oval shape.

Kuroshima’s Kankoro Mochi

Kankoro Mochi is a traditional snack made from sweet potatoes which are grown in red soil.
It is like sweet potato and like rice cake, the good mixture of the best of both.
Though it had been made as preserved food for the winter season, now it is one of the best known Nagasaki’s specialties.
Some people add ginger or sesame according to their tastes.
Kankoro Mochi is a plain taste local food free from food preservatives, coloring agents and artificial sweeteners.
The picture shows a traditional firewood furnace. In Kuroshima, a firewood furnace is indispensable for making Kuroshima tofu, manju dumplings and Kankoro Rice Cake.