Red bean soup is a popular Cantonese dessert, often served hot or chilled as an after-dinner snack. It is made from red adzuki beans, lotus seeds, tangerine peel, and brown sugar. The soup is also used to make popsicles and is a popular dish at special occasions.
Red bean soup is made from red adzuki beans and is a very popular Cantonese dessert. Usually eaten as an after-dinner snack, this sweet soup can be served hot or chilled. Also eaten as a snack, the vibrant color of red bean soup is favored by the Chinese because it is synonymous with luck and happiness. Traditionally, this soup is served plain, but fancier versions come with sago, longan seeds, and glutinous rice balls.
Having a delicious texture and smooth flavor, this soup is made for many special occasions such as Chinese New Year. It is also a popular dish at events such as birthdays and weddings. It is a soup with a fresh taste, also perfect as a summer dish. Red adzuki beans are thought to be a type of warming food and become quite mushy when boiled.
To make red bean soup, cooks soak red adzuki beans overnight to soften them. Before use, they drain the beans and soak them along with some dry lotus seeds. The other ingredients are fresh orange peel or dried mandarin and brown sugar. The cook boils the water together with the tangerine peel for a while and adds the lotus seeds and beans. The mixture simmered for about an hour or more until the beans became very soft.
At this point, the cook adds the sugar and stirs it until it dissolves completely. If the red bean soup is too thick, the cook adds boiling water until it becomes thinner. They remove the peel from the tangerine before serving the soup. Instead of brown sugar, they can also use rock sugar or white sugar. Dried tangerine peel gives the soup an exotic citrus flavor, while lotus seeds offer both texture and color contrast.
Some cooks creatively use leftover red bean soup to make popsicles by freezing it. Some add glutinous rice or tapioca balls to dessert or other ingredients such as lily bulbs and lotus roots. Adding a spoonful of vanilla gives red bean soup a really delicious flavor. Cooks can also add some coconut cream before serving the soup for more added fragrance and taste.
The Japanese mash azuki beans when making this soup and call it shiruko. Shiruko might also have red bean paste instead of chopped beans and is served with mochi, chestnuts, and dumplings. Koreans call this soup patjuk and eat it with rice flour balls.
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