Authentic Tang Yuan Soup recipe
The other day I read about Ching He Huang’s recipe for this Tang Yuan soup on the good food channel and she mentioned this dish is specifically for Chinese new year which is not right.
Chinese and Taiwanese people eat Tang Yuan during the Yuan Xiao Festival (Lantern festival) and also Winter solstice. This is a very old tradition in both China and Taiwan.
The pronunciation of Tang Yuan also has a meaning of family reunion so when we eat Tang Yuan we are thinking about our friends and family who work or live far away.
My family didn’t have money for me to learn piano or painting, drawing when I was a child so I remember I always pulled a chair into the kitchen and stand on the chair where I would watch my grandfather cook.
I used to help him cook rice and wash vegetables when I was young but although he passed away some 10 years ago I still think about him all the time, especially when I’m cooking.
I think cooking for me is not just a job or daily routine for me. It’s also my childhood memory. I hope I can share more recipes and show that Chinese and Taiwanese culture and food is not the typical stereotype. Sadly a lot of people thinking all Eastern people eat dogs, cats and anything that moves. These people are of course narrow minded idiots.
I always remember one of the head chef I worked for before shook a goose gut in front of my face and asked me: “Do you Chinese all eat this kind of stuff??” However I already told him a million times that I’m not Chinese. But I think to a lot of people if you’re “Yellow” you must be Chinese.
So today I share with you my version of Tang Yuan recipe with you and I hope you will like it. I hope one day if you see a yellow person like me you can be a bit more welcome to them. They might be a nice person and a good friend in your life. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
Credit: These photos were taken by Chris at Chris Radley Photography
Tang Yuan
Ingredients
Ingredients for Tang Yuan pastry
- 400 g glutinous rice flour
- 1 tbsp potato starch
- 200 g water
- 20 g oil
Ingredients for Tang Yuan filling
- 250 g pork mince try to use pork belly or fatty pork as it will improve the texture and taste
- 30 g fried shallots
- 1 spring onion chop finely
- 1 thin slice ginger chop finely
Seasonings for Tang Yuan filling
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp sugar
- Couple pinches white pepper
Instructions
Tang Yuan pastry procedures
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Mix everything together and knead it until it’s smooth.
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Take 15% of the mixture and separate them into 2 or 3 small balls and flatten them by hand. Boil some water in a small saucepan and cook those flatten mixture until it flow on the water.
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Mix the cooked mixture with the other raw mixture together evenly and separate the mixture into 25g each small balls.
Procedures for Tang Yuan
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Mix all the ingredients and seasonings for filling together evenly and leave it on aside for 20 minutes.
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Separate the filling into small balls and freeze them until they are hard. (It’s easier to make Tang Yuan if the filling is hard.)
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Use the pastry to cover the filling and make it look like a round shape.
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Boil some water to cook the Tang Yuan and when they float on the water they are cooked.
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Use another soup pot to cook stock and when it’s boiling add some chopped celery and dried shallots into the stock and season the stock with a bit of salt and sesame oil.
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Place the Tang Yuan into the soup and cook them for 1 more minute. You can also put some vegetables into the soup such as Bok Choy or any green vegetable.
Hi, this looks lovely. I love soup, I can eat them 3 or 5 times a day. Thank you for sharing.