Hi everyone, welcome to this episode of Amanda Tastes.
Today I am going to show you how to make taro ball with red bean soup.
If you have tasted this before, you know how common it is, and you can serve it with all kinds of tong sui(sweet soup, a collective term for cantonese dessert).
What you need is only two ingredients.
First, let me show you how to pick up the right taro.
There are two kinds, one is a much well-known and bigger, we call it Lipu taro, or Xiang taro.
The other one is smaller, and we called it eddo.
Both of them is edible and can be used in making taro balls. But taro is better in desserts.
Taro has a richer aroma. But the texture of it is not as good as eddo.
If you are making a main course, for instance, braised pork, or you are to steam a vegetable, eddo is what you are looking for,
Whereas taro is better in desserts.
Besides taro, you can also use sweet potato, Japanese potato, even pumpkin to make these balls.
Same process and ingredients, but you need to adjust the amount of starch based on what kind of taro you are going to use in your recipe.
Sweet potato balls come out yellow, Japanese potato balls are bright purple, and pumpkin balls are golden.
You may try different colors in your dessert.
Next, let's talk about starch.
Some recipes online recommend using sweet potato starch, even potato starch.
In fact, if you have access, the best kind is tapioca starch.
Some Chinese translation of tapioca is misleading. Anyway, tapioca is what you are looking for in this recipe.
Only tapioca is capable of making a springy texture.
If you go for sweet potato starch or potato starch, it may come out springy when it is still hot, but not when it cools down.
Besides taro balls, the ingredients for a red bean soup is very basic as well.
All you need is red beans, sugar and a pinch of salt.
Red bean soup takes some time, so let's make it first.
Soak red beans in clear water for half a day or overnight.
Use a stew pot, add in soaked red beans. Discard those soaking water.
Pour in some fresh water and make sure the red beans are submerged under water. And then bring it to a boil.
These is a tip when it comes to boil red bean. Do not boil them all at once. Instead, boil for twice, and in this way they are much easier to cook through.
For the first boil, keep cooking after it comes to a boil for 10 more mins. And then turn off the heat.
Allow those beans to cool inside the pot.
Have taste after cooling, and you can find that they are already very smooth, but not very homogeneous like a paste.
So we turn on the heat and bring it to a boil for a second time.
Once it reaches boiling point, turn down the heat to low and cook for about 30 mins. Now they are thick and paste like.
The husk of red bean is likely to come off when completely cooked.
Add in a pinch of salt now.
Followed by some sugar to taste. Salt balances the sweetness in a dessert.
Now set the red bean soup aside, and let's make taro balls.
Peel taro and cut them into thick slices.
Put them in a steam pot.
Steam for about 10-20 mins.
Cook until you can pierce through a taro with chopstick.
Now use a large mixing bowl, and add in tapioca starch and very hot steamed taro.
Mash them with a fork.
If you have a wire masher, better use it here.
Every kind of taro has a different water content, so observe and adjust accordingly.
If the mash is too dry they cannot be rolled into a ball, so you can add in a little water.
Just add in enough to make the mash into a soft dough.
Get a small piece, roll into a ball.
A taro dough is not the same as a regular flour dough, and it is not very sticky. So do not knead it too much.
If your dough is not coming together, it means the dough is dry, so add in a little water.
Roll it out into a long dough, and then cut them into little pieces.
The process is the same for making sweet potato ball.
Knead the steam sweet potato mash together and roll out into a long dough, and cut them into equal pieces.
Next, boil them.
Bring a pot of water to a boil and then add in the taro balls.
Stir gently and prevent them from sticking together.
After a few mins, they will float up. And then cook for 1 more min, and they will be ready.
Prepare a large bowl of cooling water, rinse the taro balls in the bowl to make them taste even more springy.
The springiness of taro ball highly depends on the amount of tapioca starch. The more tapioca, the more springy taro balls get. But a taste of taro will be reduced respectively.
So make your call to balance the springiness and tanginess of your taro balls.
The cooking process is the same for sweet potato balls.
Strain taro balls from cold water. You can mix in some sugar now to make them taste even better.
Even without a red bean soup to accompany it.
Transfer red bean soup into a bowl.
Add in taro balls, sweet balls and Japanese sweet potato balls.
Now, it’s done.
It is spring now, so the temperature really gets unpredictable.
When I was making this tutorial, it's still chilling outside, so I made it hot.
But when I release the video, it's getting hot. So you can make it cold.
Set the red bean soup in a fridge to cool, add in some crushed ice, and then taro balls.
Do not cool taro balls, because they taste the best coming right out of a kitchen.
Now, time for some tips.
If you'd like making some Japanese sweet potato balls, make sure you cook them at last.This is because they will make your water purple.
If you have made too many taro balls, coat them with some dry tapioca starch.
Place them in a ziploc bag and store them in the freezer, so that they won't stick around.
You can cook them again the next time you want to serve taro balls.
Handmade taro balls are rich in flavor with a taro aroma.
And they are easy to make, you will see if you try it out.
I hope you enjoy this episode of Amanda Tastes.
As usual, don’t forget to thumb up and subscribe. Lastly, thanks for watching, and I will see you next week.