Cooking Attempt #44: 호박타락죽 (Buttercup squash milk porridge)

호박 - squash
타락 - old Korean word for milk
죽 - porridge

I saw them make this on an episode of 무한도전, which is a Korean variety show. Apparently they used to serve this at the palace to important foreign guests. It's supposed to be a lightly sweet appetizer.

I've been meaning to make this porridge for a long time, but didn't get around to it until I saw a nice pile of buttercup squash at the grocery store last week.

I set the rice to cook in my rice cooker. After scrubbing the squash clean, I cut it up and scraped out all the seeds.



I cooked them in the microwave for 10 minutes. When you do this, you have to make sure that the squash pieces are placed so that the peels are facing up. This is to prevent water from pooling in the meat portion of the squash. Something about diluting the flavour of the squash. *shrug*

After it's cooked, the peel comes off easily with a fork. You can eat the peels, actually.



I put 2 cups of milk, 3/4 cup of cooked sticky rice, a pinch of salt and the squash pieces into a pot. This should be cooked at medium heat and no higher. You don't want the milk to burn. From this point on, you have to stir constantly to prevent the milk from burning. Gradually, the mixture turns into a sunny yellow. After it was heated enough, I used my hand mixer to make it into a nice thick consistency.



Then I mixed in a tablespoon of honey and poured myself a bowl! I sprinkled on a tiny bit of nori just to give it a visual accent. Mmm~ It was like eating a bowl of sunshine!