Rice Puff Making at Tea and Rice Resort – Yilan, Taiwan

During my 5-day tour in Taiwan, I was able to visit three leisure farms in Yilan County and one of them is Tea and Rice Resort.

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Photo courtesy of http://young100.ilc.edu.tw/

Located at No. 48, Section 2, Yongxing Road in Dongshan Township, Tea and Rice Resort was once a warehouse that has been partly converted into a museum that serves as a learning center for kids and even for adults! 

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Tea and Rice Resort offers fun interactive activities such as mushroom planting, bento making and rice puff making to promote agricultural awareness and to achieve a better understanding about the importance of agriculture in the community.

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They also offer a farm-to-table organic dining experience at their restaurant to showcase their farm fresh produce.   

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They have a wide range

of tea, rice and other agricultural products available at their shopping center. 

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We were given a brief tour of their museum and had an introductory course on rice processing before we proceeded to making our very own rice puffs.

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The first step of processing rice is to feed the grains of unhusked rice into a rice huller to remove the chaff. Here, Jaison Yang of Travel Warehouse volunteered to load the rough rice into the rice huller. Once turned on, the two

abrasive rollers turn at different speeds to remove the chaff before it passes through the machine as brown rice.

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The brown rice is later fed into a rice miller to remove the bran layer turning it into white rice. The whole process surprisingly took little time. 

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Jude Bacalso, Cebu Daily News editor, placed a kilo of white rice into the rice puffing machine which was then sealed

tightly

so pressure can build up inside. As the machine was heating up to puff up the rice, we were all asked to stand back and cover our ears. Just right before the machine released all the pressure, the guides shouted “BE PO NGA!” which is a warning that something will explode. Sure enough, we heard a loud bang that sounded like a gunshot. 

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The rice puffs were gathered and transferred into a ginormous mixing bowl… 

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and brown sugar syrup was added to make it sweet and sticky.

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Photo Courtesy of Jude Bacalso

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We then popped them into heart-shaped pans and let them sit for a couple of minutes to cool and…

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Ta-dah! This crunchy snack reminded me so much of a Cebuano treat called ampao that I wanted to take it home with me to show family and friends. But alas, I wasn’t able to because I devoured it immediately. It was irresistibly good. 

Thanks Taiwan Leisure Farms Development Association and Ma’am Jane Syjuco of Everbright Travel Agency for this fun and educational experience!

Read about my Taiwan Travel Guide here
What to Eat and Drink in Taiwan
Rice harvesting at Fairy Story Village Organic Farm
Mosquito repellent making at Forest 18 Farm
Dragon fruit picking at Xing Ke Dragon Fruit Farm