How Mochi Brought Big Bounce Energy to Breakfast

A post on X that went viral a couple of summers ago perfectly captures the spell that mochi has cast on us lately.

In it, a woman named Chelsea shares a photo of her open suitcase as it’s being inspected by a TSA agent. The suspicious goods? Four unopened boxes of Trader Joe’s Ube Mochi Pancake & Waffle Mix tucked neatly inside. She apologizes for traveling with an overabundance of pancake mix and recalls this as the agent’s response: “Never apologize for being who you are.”

The Magic of Mochi

That thought could very well apply to the mochi mix, too. In the last few years, mochi–Japan’s irresistibly chewy little rice cake–has bounced into the breakfast world, finding its way not just into pancakes and waffles, but also doughnuts, muffins and even banana bread.

To Kat Lieu, author of Modern Asian Baking at Home and founder of the Instagram account @subtleasian.baking, the reason for mochi’s rising popularity is pretty obvious.

“Mochi is quite magical,” she says. “Some you can pull apart. Some will bounce right back. The elastic texture is so appealing.”

That alluring bounciness is what made mochi an easy choice when it came time for Chrissy Teigen to expand the food offerings under her Cravings brand. Last fall, Teigen launched three baking mixes: one for her now-famous banana bread, another for white chocolate macadamia cookies, and the last for buttermilk mochi pancakes and waffles.

The combination of buttermilk and mochi nods to husband John Legend’s beloved pancakes and Teigen’s penchant for adding an unexpected twist to classic recipes.

“Mochi complements pancakes so well,” says Teigen. “The mochi gives the pancakes a delightfully springy texture. They're super bouncy and chewy.”

Mochi’s Magic Ingredient

The texture that makes mochi and its trending breakfast brethren (not to mention desserts like mochi ice cream and butter mochi) so undeniably enticing doesn’t come from some newfangled, impossible-to-pronounce ingredient or complicated multi-step technique, but one that’s been around for centuries: rice flour.

While it has recently entered the radar of American home cooks, rice flour has long been a culinary staple in many Asian cuisines. It’s the star ingredient in Filipino kakanin (such as bibingka), Chinese nian gao (both sweet and savory), Korean duk (in all its glorious forms), Singaporean kuih, and, of course, Japanese mochi.

Rice flour typically comes in two forms. Regular rice flour is made from medium or long grain rice, while glutinous rice flour (also known as sweet rice flour) comes from short grain rice. The former lacks elasticity so foods made with regular rice flour will often require other ingredients such as potato or tapioca starch to get some bounce. Sweet rice flour, on the other hand, is naturally sticky and helps give many dishes their signature stretchy chew all by itself.

There are other nuances to rice flour. For example, brands use different methods to mill it. Thai brand Erawan, which produces the green bags ubiquitous in Asian grocery stores, water mills its glutinous rice flour, while Koda Farms, California’s oldest rice producer, dry mills its version. To make sure you get the right texture for what you’re making, it’s important to use the rice flour brand that’s recommended in the recipe if it’s noted.

Mochi for Breakfast

Of course, mochi—and rice cakes in all forms, really—are not new to the breakfast world by any means. Ozoni, a Japanese mochi soup, is traditionally enjoyed every New Year’s morning. Lieu recalls eating slices of crisp, chewy nian gao for breakfast as a kid.

“Mochi as breakfast has been around for forever. In many Asian cultures, it’s as common as bread,” she says. “Every Lunar New Year, my mom would make nian gao coated with egg and pan fry it. It’s our version of a pancake.”

But Lieu believes that the melding of the Eastern ingredient with Western breakfast foods does bring a newfound appreciation.

“The chewy texture is something that’s almost unexpected from a baked good. When you think of cakes, you don’t think of something that’s bouncy, like QQ boba.”

The fact that mochi is gluten free is another reason why it has made its way to mass supermarket shelves. And baking mixes like those offered by TJ’s and Cravings have introduced a new audience to the endless versatility and wonder of rice flour.

“There’s an ease and accessibility to it, to this ‘new’ magical ingredient, but we should remember that it’s been around for centuries and it’s a staple across Asia,” says Lieu. “Mochi should be for everyone, but remember the cultural significance, too.”