Chapssal (찹쌀)

Chapssal is the glutinous form of rice, Oryza sativa, grown on the Korean Peninsula alongside the ordinary short-grain japonica that is eaten daily as bap. It belongs to the old grain culture of the peninsula, where it was reserved for the dishes of festival, ancestral rites and the court table: tteok, yakbap, yugwa and the sweet rice drinks. The Jeungbo Sallim Gyeongje and the Gyuhap Chongseo record its use in rice cakes, rice wines and the pastes of the household. The principal growing districts are the plains of Jeolla and Chungcheong, and the grain is carried today by every household that makes tteok for the New Year and the harvest festival of Chuseok.

Chapssal is a short, opaque, chalk-white grain, rounder and chalkier than the translucent japonica eaten daily. Its starch is almost wholly amylopectin, which is why it cooks to a sticky, elastic, faintly glossy mass instead of separate grains. It is sold as whole grain, soaked and ground into wet flour, or dry-milled into chapssalgaru, the sweet rice flour; Maangchi uses the flour for the porridge that carries gochujang's sweetness, for glutinous rice cakes and for the batter of fried sweets. The whole grain is soaked, then steamed rather than boiled, and is the basis of yakbap, ogokbap and the mixed-grain rice of the Daeboreum festival. Chapssal is not interchangeable with ordinary rice; used in its place, a dish loses its chew and its hold.

Chapssal is eaten sweet and rich, with jujube, chestnut, pine nut and honey in yakbap, with roasted bean flour in injeolmi, and with red bean in many tteok. It is drunk with sikhye and with cold barley tea, and it sits beside the sharper dishes of the feast table as a soft, neutral ground. The structural reason is its starch: a dense, elastic, nearly flavourless mass takes sweetness, oil and salt without competing, and its weight calms the sourness and heat of kimchi and the jang beside it.