Khanom Ooloo | Sticky Rice Sesame Balls | Lao Food at Saeng’s Kitchen

It's hard for me to just eat one of these chewy glutinous rice balls. They are filled with vibrant yellow mung beans mixed with shreds of coconut. This dessert also incorporates fresh potatoes in the dough and it helps crisp up the balls. You'll want to eat these right out of the fryer before anyone else gets their hands on them. Sabaidee Pinong. Hi fam. Welcome back to Sang's Kitchen. This is a photo of my balls. Today we are making a dessert seen all across Southeast Asia. In Vietnam it is called Ban Cam. In Thailand it's called Kanom Hong Kai. But today we are making the Lao version and it's vegan friendly and it's called Kanom Ta Kwai Ooloo which translates to ox eyeballs that are very chubby big which does equate to what this looks like. So it is a glutinous rice ball that is filled with mung bean and then all around it you'll have sesame seeds that are toasted from frying. It is a delicious dessert. I'm hungry for these balls as I know you are. So let's get into it. The first thing you want to make for this dessert is the mung bean filling. So go ahead and grab your mung beans. Mung beans come in many different forms. They can be made into cellophane noodles. They can grow into bean sprouts and they can even be made into a sweet paste that we're using for our dessert today. So this ingredient is very versatile and it can come as sweet or savory. And you want to rinse it under cool water and you're going to see the yellow starch come out and your water is going to turn yellow. Go ahead and pour that out. Rinse it three times and then at the last rinse you want to add hot water to the top and then let it sit for at least one hour. Come back to it replace that hot water and with more hot water and then let it sit again for another hour. So after two hours you're going to drain all that water out and you're going to have soaked mung bean filling and then you're going to get your steamer ready. I'm using a sticky rice steamer with a cheesecloth so go ahead and cook your mung beans. You're going to cook it with any steamer that you have for at least 15 minutes to get it really soft. After it finishes cooking go ahead and grab a food processor. We're going to make the filling really fast. Add your cooked mung beans then your sugar, salt, oil, shredded coconut and process that really fast. And you're going to see it turn to this play-doh type texture that is somewhat dry but that's what you want. And then with your hands you want to go ahead and start forming one inch diameter balls and you want to pack it together. And once you're done forming all the balls go ahead and set that aside. Now that the filling is done we're going to make the shells. So these shells the Lao version is made out of mostly gluten sticky rice because in Laos that's all we eat sticky rice for everything even desserts. Glutinous rice flour has a much higher starch content than regular rice flour. Know that glutinous rice flour can be used for a thickening agent or even for a lot of desserts like today. So also note that glutinous rice flour is the same as sticky rice flour but also know that it cannot be substituted for regular rice flour. Did you get that? But this sticky rice has been turned into a powder so it's become a flour and before we even start working with that we're going to have to use the potato. And you want to peel a potato and then cut it into about one inch sizes and you want to boil that for about eight minutes until everything becomes soft. And then take a mortar and pestle add your measured amount of potatoes in there and you want to turn it into a paste. And then get another pot add the measured amount of water get it to a rolling boil and then also add the measured amount of potato paste and you want to whisk those two together until everything is a homogenous mixture and then leave that to the side. Now in a separate bowl you're going to add your rice flour, your sugar, your salt and you're going to whisk those together and becomes really well mixed. Now carefully add your hot potato mixture right on into the rice flour mixture and you're going to use your spatula to really mix that all together until you don't see any more dry spots. Once it's well mixed with your spatula go ahead and go in with your hands and start kneading it and you're going to notice it's somewhat more sticky than the filling that we made earlier but that's okay. And that's how you make your shell so we're going to put both of those fillings and the shell together now. Grab a handful of the dough and you're going to roll it in between your hands to make the perfect ball and then you're going to gently flatten the dough and grab one of the filling balls and put it right in the middle and now you want to carefully fold the dough all around the filling until you don't see it anymore. And again we're going to roll it in between our hands you want to create an even layer of the dough so when we fry it it fries evenly. And now the dough should be somewhat sticky so go ahead and grab your sesame seeds. Sesame seeds come from a very strong plant that survives in droughts and high heat conditions. It can even grow in deserts where no other crop can so it's a survivor ingredient that packs a lot of nutrients. And place it into the sesame seed bowl and you're going to roll it all around the seeds will start sticking to your ball and now again you're going to put the ball in between your hands and start rolling it again between your hands so that the sesame seeds really are stuck to the ball. And there you go that's how you create the sesame seed ball and so we're going to go to the frying station now. For this style of frying we want to do a gentle fry so go ahead and put your fryer at 325 degrees. Once it reaches that temperature I would say start with about four balls to practice with first and you're going to see that all the balls stay at the bottom of the oil and that's totally fine. It's going to take about 15 to 20 minutes depending on your deep fryer and so once you see that your balls rise up then you can start rotating them letting them cook until they turn brown. Do not rush this process or else you're going to get really dark balls with uncooked insides and you don't want that. Here are the balls everyone so I'm going to take a good bite. Mmm look at that these are so good you can eat them anytime during the day one of my favorite things to eat very chewy and also that mung bean sweetness inside it's the perfect dessert. Make sure you fry dozens of these balls because you're going to run out real fast at your household. It was one of my favorite things to eat as a kid after a grocery run with my mom so I hope you recreate this recipe and also create those sesame ball memories. If you like this video please comment share and subscribe and I will talk to you all on another episode of Sang's Kitchen. Bye!