Tangyuan 湯圓 or glutinous rice balls is an essential part of Chinese New Year and Lantern Festival - it represents family togetherness and happiness. I’ve always wanted to make my own tangyuan, but failed miserably. I am terrible at making dough. Well, I have a simple recipe hack that maximizes the filling and doesn’t even need dough. The best part is that you can maximize the amount of filling. We’re using black sesame filling here, but you can make it with any of your favorites.
INGREDIENTS Makes 15-20 Ingredients 100g Black Sesame, Roasted 70g Sugar (you can reduce this if you prefer it less sweet) 70g Butter Glutinous Rice Flour, as needed Cold Water, as needed.
3 1” slices of Ginger Rock Sugar Water
Recipe Toast the black sesame over low heat, until fragrant and easily be turned into powder in your hands. You can also add in a few white sesame to gauge how long to toast it for - remove it once the white sesame turns golden brown. Blend the black sesame in your food processor or blender until a coarse powder is formed. Add in butter and sugar Continue blending until a nice glossy paste is formed. This can take up to 3 minutes. Empty the filling into a bowl, and place in the fridge to solidify. Once hardened, form balls about ¾” in diameter or your desired size. Place on a parchment paper, and freeze. Prepare a try of glutinous rice flour, a caulander, and a container of cold water. Roll your frozen fillings in the glutinous rice flour until fully covered. Work in small batches, as it gets difficult to fully coat the balls when doing too many at the same time. Place in the caulander and dunk into the cold water. Gently place back into the glutinous rice flour, roll around until well coated. Repeat this stil 6-8 times or until the desired thickness is achieved. You’ll need to work quickly, otherwise the outer layer may crack. Once they are done, you can freeze or boil them immediately Bring a pot of water to a boil, but not too vigorously. Drop in your tang yuan, move it around a little bit, and boil it until it floats (about 5 mins).
Ginger Sugar Syrup Bring 4 cups of water to a boil Add in ginger and rock sugar. Boil until sugar is fully dissolved. Remove the ginger pieces if you don’t want the ginger flavor to be too strong.
Serve the Tangyuan in the Ginger Sugar Syrup immediately.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Tangyuan is a must-eat food for Chinese New Year, although by the time I remember that it's Chinese
New Year, all the tangyuans are sold out. All what's left are those weird flavors or the super
old ones that's already cracked. I tried to make it once and the dough was so thick and so raw it
was basically inedible. But now I have discovered this super food hack that's going to make it so
easy for you to make tangyuan at home, and it's going to give you the maximum amount of filling.
Because come on, we all live for the filling. For today's filling, I'm going to make
my favorite, black sesame. But you can use whatever filling you want for this hack,
it's gonna work. Let's start with toasting our black sesame. You're just gonna do it
very lightly and don't let it burn. Holy cow, that almost like lost my eyebrows there.
As low as you can go without losing your face. Here's another hack, if you have some white
sesame, put that in there as well. So when the white sesame turns a little golden brown,
you'll know that black sesame is done. Otherwise, it's too difficult to see.
And if you don't have white sesame, this is another trick you can do. Just pick it up,
oh it's hot, and then you squeeze it with your fingers, and if it crushes easily,
then that means you're good to go.
Whoops. Still good, still good. Let's try again.
We're making our own sesame powder, but if you want to, you can also buy sesame powder so you
don't have to do this step. Now it's time to make the filling. Put the powder in your blender.
Oh no, it's stuck. Beat it, beat it. Add your sugar, and add the oil of your choice. So
traditionally, it's made with lard. We don't have that, so we're using butter. You can also
use coconut oil if you want. And we're going to blend this on high for about three minutes,
because that would squeeze out all that oil from the sesame and turn it into a paste.
Maybe you don't need three minutes with the Vitamix. Starting to smell like it already.
Just gonna push the sides down a bit and just do it a little longer so we don't miss anything.
That's it. So good. The hardest part of this recipe is getting it out of the blender.
I've used every single spatula that I have. Actually, we have more. A lot more. Now for
this hack to work, your filling needs to be in a bowl shape. So I'm gonna put this in the fridge
because it just came out of the Vitamix and it's a little warm. A few moments later. I've put it in
the fridge for a bit. Now you can see it has solidified, so it should be easier to roll them
into balls now. Is this round enough for you, Kevin? No. Have you seen in those videos where
those Chinese chefs does like five or ten at a time, and you're like, what the heck?
Reminiscing on the time when we rolled out all those tapioca balls. This is much easier.
You may have noticed that we haven't been posting quite often here on this channel,
but don't worry, we do plan to post more often. But that's because on top of my full-time job,
I started to revive my old channel, and that's Off the Great Wall. That one is about Chinese
culture. So if you're interested in that channel, go check it out. I have left the link in the
description down below. Put your round balls on some parchment paper and freeze them until
they're hard. That's what she said. Ugh. The next day. Before you make your tangyuan, boil some
water and add rock sugar and few spices of ginger for a simple sugar syrup. So whenever your sesame
balls are hard enough, that's what she said, you can do this step. First of all, get yourself some
glutinous rice flour. Make sure it is glutinous rice flour. I think that's what happened the first
time I made it, and that's why I failed. And get yourself a shallow dish and a colander in a
container with some cold water. Put some glutinous rice flour in your dish. Toss your frozen balls
into the glutinous rice flour. Give it a good mix, mix, mix, mix, mix, mix. Once completely coated,
put it in the colander and submerge it for a quick dip in the cold water. Gently pour it back into
the flour and give it a good toss or use your hands to mix it all around to cover it all again.
The water acts as a glue to stick the flour and create the tangyuan skin. Add more flour periodically.
Repeat this process a lucky eight times or until you're happy with it. You're going to have to
work relatively quickly here. If they start to get soft, the coating could crack. Bring your water to
a boil but not too vigorously or else your tangyuan can crack. Move it around a bit so it doesn't stick.
Cook for five minutes or until the tangyuan floats, then you're done. These tangyuan are
massive. Tangyuan sounds like tuan yuan and that means whole family togetherness and happiness.
So I'm wishing you and your family tuan tuan, yuan yuan and enjoy your tangyuan together.
