#BEAN PASTE HOW TO#

To serve the red bean paste directly, or if the red bean paste is the main ingredient in the dessert, you should use 200 grams (7 ounces) of sugar. If you are not sure about the sweetness, you can divide and add the sugar in two to three batches. One more word about the sugar in this recipe. It is much healthier this way, and you can adjust the amount of sugar to your taste, and you can select high quality azuki beans to make the paste taste great. If you cannot easily find pre-made red bean paste your local Asian market, I highly recommend you to make it at home. This is the reason you find that supermarket red bean paste has a better mouthfeel than the homemade kind. To make the texture of bean paste smooth and gooey, a substantial amount of sugar and lard (or vegetable oil) will be blended into the paste. The mashed beans are diluted into a slurry, then strained to remove the husk. For smooth paste, the azuki beans are boiled and mashed without adding sugar. The smooth red bean paste is a bit of a hassle to make and normally can just be purchased from a Chinese or Japanese market. The finished paste will have a consistent thick texture that is easy to shape, and contains some whole and broken beans. You only need to boil the azuki beans with sugar until very soft, then smash them to the texture you prefer. The mashed red bean paste is the most common for home cooking and is the one I include in the recipe below. The key difference is whether it contains the bean husk or not. There are mainly two types of red bean paste in Chinese cuisine – mashed and smooth. This sweet and gooey red bean paste is so delicious that you can even eat it by itself. To make those yummy desserts, you will need red bean paste.

There are red bean popsicles, shaved ice with red bean sauce, fried dough with red bean paste filling, red beans with coconut milk, red bean pancakes etc. It is commonly used in Mainland-style hot pastries and Cantonese and Taiwanese cold desserts. The azuki bean ( 赤红豆, Chi Hong Dou) is one of the most important ingredients for making Chinese desserts.

#BEAN PASTE HOW TO#

Learn how to make red bean paste for Chinese dessert, mooncake and pastry using this easy method.

Bean paste