Recipes

There is a traditional Chinese culture of eating sweet glutinous rice balls on the winter solstice and Chinese New Year. I would like to share its recipe and hope you would like to try it out.

First, let's make tweet glutinous balls.

1. Pour 1/2 cup of boiling water into 250g of rice flour to half-cook it (hot water can make the rice ball nice and chewy).
2. Mix it well.
3. Add some cold water to the dough (water should be added bit by bit, depending on the consistency of the dough).
4. Knead the dough until there is no flour on the hands and bowl (the rice balls will become chewier if we knead the dough for longer).
5. With the dough the size of a thumb, use your palms to roll it into a ball.
6. Use a wet towel to cover the rice balls to prevent them from getting dry.
7. Finish all the dough.

Second, cook the sweet glutinous balls.

8. Boil a pot of water and put in all the rice balls. Cooked rice balls will float onto the surface of the water.
9. Add 1 bowl of cold water into the pot when the rice balls start to float to cook them thoroughly.
10. Stir occasionally to stop rice balls from sticking to the pot.
11. Sieve out all the cooked rice balls and place them into a bowl of cold water (this process will make the rice balls chewier) for 1 minute and then take them out.

Third, make delicious sweet glutinous balls with soup.

12. Place 2 slices of ginger into a pot with 4 bowls of water, and place 200g of sugar into the pot.
13. After the sugar has melted, place the rice balls into the pot. Let it boil until the rice balls float onto the surface again.

Finally, piping hot glutinous rice balls are now ready to serve. Enjoy!