Today’s dish, Pan-fried Turnip Cake (Daikon Mochi) is a simpler version of the traditional Chinese Turnip Cake. The Turnip Cake mixture is cooked in a frying pan instead of steaming, then the sliced cakes are pan-fried. It’s an one-pot recipe.
My Turnip Cake is a round cake before cutting, unlike the traditional Turnip Cake, but it has the unique gooey texture of Turnip Cake. It tastes so good that I make it for my breakfast or lunch as a main dish whenever I have daikon.
About Turnip Cake
Turnip Cake is a Chinese Dim Sum dish. The base ingredients are shredded daikon (white radish) and flour, usually rice flour. Chinese sausages, dried shrimp, chopped green onions, and chopped shiitake mushrooms are often mixed into the base ingredients after stir-frying.
Steam the mixed ingredients in a loaf pan, cut the steamed cake into smaller pieces, then pan-fry to brown and crisp the surface of the pieces.
Chinese Turnip Cake is often served with chilli sauce, hoisin sauce, and/or sweet soy sauce.
I can understand why it is called ‘cake’ because the sticky texture is similar to rice cake. But I don’t quite understand where the word ‘turnip’ came from. The key vegetable is white radish, not turnip. I would have expected to call it ‘white radish cake’.
The Japanese name for today’s dish is correctly translated, though. Daikon Mochi (大根餅) means white radish (大根) rice cake (餅).
Some Japanese people do follow the traditional Chinese method of making Turnip Cake, but my recipe is how most Japanese people make Turnip Cake. It is much simpler to make, but you can still have the unique gooey texture. I guess it’s a Japanese-style Turnip Cake.
What’s in my Pan-Fried Turnip Cake (Daikon Mochi)
I listed the ingredients for the Turnip Cake into two groups. Daikon Mochi Base makes a gooey pancake, while Additional Ingredients are variables and can be substituted for ingredients of your choice.
Daikon Mochi Base
- Shredded daikon (white radish)
- Flour – rice flour or wheat flour
- Corn flour / cornstarch
- Salt
- Sesame oil to pan-fry
It is important to use a fresh daikon, which contains a lot of water in the flesh, so that it makes a wet batter when mixed with flour.
To extract as much water from the shredded daikon as possible, I used a super fine mandolin shredder that I bought from a Daiso discount shop (right photo below). It’s actually used to make shredded daikon for sashimi garnish.
Various mandolin shredders.
If you are using the shredder side of the 4-sided grater, you want to shred only the half of the daikon and the other half should be grated (right photo below). Then you will get a sufficient amount of water from the daikon. Some recipes even grate the entire daikon to get more water out if it.
Left: using super fine mandolin shredder. Right: using 4 sided shredder and grater.
Additional Ingredients
- Bacon strips
- Dried baby shrimp – paper-thin (not meaty ones)
- Finely chopped green onion
Instead of Chinese sausage, I used bacon as I happened to have some, and it is easier for everyone to buy. You can substitute these for your choice of ingredients. However, if your ingredient takes a long time to cook, you’ll have to pre-cook it.
You can add more ingredients or omit some. In fact, you can make a plain Daikon Mochi without additional ingredients.
My suggestion of additional ingredients includes but is not limited to, finely chopped shiitake mushrooms, chopped garlic chives, shredded ham, and bonito flakes.
How to Make Pan-Fried Turnip Cake (Daikon Mochi)
Unlike the traditional Chinese Turnip Cake, I don’t pre-cook additional ingredients, nor do I steam the batter before pan-frying. To have a similar effect to steaming and pan-frying, I cook the batter in a frying pan with a lid on.
- Put shredded daikon and all of Additional Ingredients in a bowl and mix well.
- Add flour and salt to the bowl.
- Mix well ensuring that the daikon and other ingredients are evenly coated in flour.
- Heat a frying pan with sesame oil over medium heat and spread the Daikon Mochi mixture into the pan.
- Shape the mixture into a flat round cake.
- Place a lid on and cook for about 3 minutes.
- Turn the cake over, add some more sesame oil and cook further 3 minutes with the lid on.
- Transfer the Daikon Mochi to a cutting board and cut the Daikon Mochi into 16 pieces.
- (Optional) return the Daikon Mochi pieces to the pan and cook the cut sides of the cakes to brown and crisp.
In step 1, you don’t have to mix ingredients before adding flour, but it makes mixing of all the ingredients easier. The purpose of the optional last step is to seal and tidy up the cut surface of the Daikon Mochi pieces. I sometimes omit this step, but my Daikon Mochi tastes as good as those seared on the sides.
The original Turnip Cake is often served with sweet soy sauce and chilli sauce. But today, I served ponzu as a dipping sauce, which makes Daikon Mochi more authentic. Alternatively, you can simply mix soy sauce and vinegar with a little bit of chilli oil/sauce just like having Japanese Gyōza.
The vinegar in the dipping sauce makes the dish somewhat lighter.
You can keep Daikon Mochi in the fridge for 2-3 days, or the freezer for 1 month. Warm up the chilled/frozen Daikon Mochi in microwave, then pan-fry to re-heat.
Yumiko
Watch How To Make It
Pan-fried Turnip Cake (Daikon Mochi) is a simpler version of the traditional Chinese Turnip Cake. The Turnip Cake batter is cooked in a frying pan instead of steaming the batter, then pay-frying the sliced cakes.
Don't forget to see the section 'MEAL IDEAS' below the recipe card! It gives you a list of dishes that I have already posted and this recipe that can make up a complete meal. I hope it is of help to you.
- 250g/0.6lb shredded daikon (white radish, note 1)
- 4 tbsp flour (rice flour or wheat flour)
- 4 tbsp corn flour / cornstarch
- A pinch of salt
- 1½ tbsp sesame oil
- 60g/2.1oz bacon cut into thin strips (note 2)
- 10g/0.5oz dried paper-thin baby shrimps (note 2)
- 4 tbsp green onion finely chopped (note 2)
- Ponzu (note 3)
-
Put daikon, shrimps, bacon and green onion into a bowl and mix well with a spatula. You can omit mixing ingredients in this step but it makes the mixing with the flour easier.
-
Add flour and salt to the bowl and mix the ingredients very well ensuring that the flour is evenly mixed, and there are no clusters of the ingredients in the mixture.
-
Heat a medium size flying pan (about 23cm/9 1⁄16" in diameter, note 4) with 1 tablespoon of sesame oil over medium heat.
-
Spread the daikon mixture in the frying pan to shape a round pancake. The thickness should be about 2cm/¾".
-
Using the spatula, smooth the surface of the mixture as well as all around the edge (note 5).
-
Place a lid on and reduce the heat to low. Cook for about 3 minutes.
-
Check the bottom of the Daikon Mochi to see if the surface is browned. If required, cook for extra minute or so.
-
Hold the handle of the frying pan, shake the pan and shift the Daikon Mochi away from the handle, then in one quick tossing motion, flip the cake upside down (note 6).
-
Cook further 3 minutes with the lid on.
-
Transfer the Daikon Mochi to a cutting board. Cut the Daikon Mochi into 16 pieces by cutting it into 4 equal width strips, then cut them perpendicular to the first cut into 4 pieces each.
-
Heat the frying pan that you used previously over medium heat. A small amount of oil should still be in there, but if not add sesame oil.
-
Put all of the Daikon Mochi pieces back into the pan. Using cooking chopsticks or tongs, hold the piece vertically and lightly brown the cut-side of each piece.
-
Transfer the Daikon Mochi pieces to a serving plate and serve with a dipping sauce.
1. Make sure that daikon is very fresh and full of moisture. When you buy it, compare the weight of daikon roots and buy a heavier root for the same size. The heavy root contains more water.
I used a very fine mandolin shredder that I bought from a Daiso discount shop to shred daikon (see the photo in post). If you are using a shredder that makes larger shredded pieces, such as a 4-sided grater, you should make half shredded, and half grated. See the comparison photos in the post.
2. You can substitute these ingredients with other ingredients of your choice. For suggestions, please refer to Additional Ingredients under the section WHAT’S IN MY PAN-FRIED TURNIP CAKE (DAIKON MOCHI) in the post.
3. Alternatively, you can simply mix soy sauce and vinegar with a little bit of chilli oil/sauce, just like having Japanese Gyōza.
4. A larger frying pan is ok since you can easily control the size of the round cake. But if your frying pan is too small, the mixture becomes too thick to cook through without burning the surface.
5. By smoothing the surface, it gets evenly burnt when flipped and cooked. Tidied up round edges results in neater shapes of Daikon Mochi pieces.
6. Because Daikon Mochi is quite heavy and thick, it is not so difficult to flip it in a pan.
Here is how you flip it:
i) Angle the handle slightly higher than the other end and pull the handle towards you.
ii) In one quick motion, push the pan forward, then up. This will cause the cake to jump and turn over.
iii) When catching, your pan will be approximately where you started from.
If you are not confident to flip without using a utensil, use a very large spatula to flip the cake.
7. You can keep Daikon Mochi in the fridge for 2-3 days, or the freezer for 1 month. Warm up the chilled/frozen Daikon Mochi in microwave, then pan-fry to re-heat.
8 Nutrition per serving as a main, using wheat flour. Using rice flour will be slightly higher calories, by about 50 kcal.
serving: 213g calories: 355kcal fat: 23g (35%) saturated fat: 5.6g (28%) trans fat: 0.0g polyunsaturated fat: 6.6g monounsaturated fat: 9.5g cholesterol: 30mg (10%) sodium: 364mg (15%) potassium: 455mg (13%) carbohydrates: 29g (10%) dietary fibre: 3.8g (15%) sugar: 3.0g protein: 8.6g vitamin a: 3.7% vitamin c: 35% calcium: 3.8% iron: 10%
Meal Ideas
A typical Japanese meal consists of a main dish, a couple of side dishes, a soup and rice. I try to come up with a combination of dishes with a variety of flavours, colours, textures and make-ahead dishes.
I decided to serve Daikon Mochi as a main. It doesn’t contain a lot of protein, but I can supplement it with a side dish. On the other hand, it contains quite bit of flour, so I decided not to have rice with it.
I think that egg goes well with Daikon Mochi, so I picked Egg Drop Soup. But you can have a side dish using eggs such as Japanese Style Scrambled Eggs (Tamago Toji) and have a miso soup instead.
- Main: Pan-fried Turnip Cake (Daikon Mochi) – today’s recipe, you can make ahead.
- Side dish 1: Chicken Patties Wrapped in Perilla – a couple of pieces per serving, make ahead.
- Side dish 2: Gomoku-mame (Simmered Soybeans with Vegetables) – make ahead.
- Salad: Broccolini Karashi-ae (Mustard Dressing) – or other green salad.
- Soup: Japanese Style Egg Drop Soup (Kakitama-jiru) – or miso soup if you are serving an egg dish as a side.
Hi Yumiko,
Thanks for sharing the Daikon Mochi recipe.
I bought a packet of Rice Powder from Japan.
Is Rice Powder the same as Rice Flour?
Hi Su, yes, it is the same.
This is a nice “shortcut” 😁. I am usually to lazy to steam and panfry afterwards.
And btw, the reason why it is more comment called turnip cake is most likely because it was translated by someone who was either not very knowledgeable of the English terms or someone who did not know the actual ingredients of this dish. The Chinese word 萝卜 can be translated with turnip as well as radish. It would always depend on the context. You if you add a 胡 in front of the 萝卜 in t would be a carrot instead. Maybe that is the reason why this dish is translated to carrot cake in Singapore 😁.
Hi Jenny, the texture is not the same as turnip cake and not too dense, but as you say, it’s a shortcut. Thanks for the explanation for how the name came about. The origin of the name of old dishes fascinates me. A dish is sometimes named based on misunderstanding, playing on words, or odd reason! turnip cake in china, Carrot cake in Singapore, that’s funny. Japan made it right then by calling it Daikon Mochi.
Hi Yumiko, that looks delicious and easy to make! I have daikon in the fridge and will give it a go.
Hi Lorri, please do try and let me know what you think.
Hi Yumiko, I made a double batch, we had one lap churn (Chinese sausage) so I used that instead of bacon, also added shiitake mushrooms. The lap churn is not as salty as bacon, so I added extra pinch of salt. It’s very tasty.
Hi Lorri, that’s great. The daikon mochi with churn and mushrooms must taste similar to the Chinese version.
looks delicious…must try thank you
Hi Liz, please make it and let me know what you think.