Our easy dango recipe will show you how to make three popular sweet Japanese rice dumplings on skewers: Hanami, Mitarashi and Bocchan.
On its own, dango is mildly sweet and chewy. It's a traditional Japanese sweet that goes well with matcha tea, and we love all three dango flavours we've about to show you.
Hanami dango is tricoloured (pink, green, and white) and is often eaten during cherry blossom season. Mitarashi dango is plain in colour and drizzled with a light, sweet soy glaze. Lastly, Bocchan dango is red, yellow, and green and is a less common type of Japanese rice dumpling.
Jump to:
- Dango Ingredients
- Dango Recipe (Hanami, Mitarashi, Bocchan)
- Japanase Dango Cooking Tips
- Ingredient Substitutes
- Natural Food Colouring
- Other Dango Sauce and Toppings
- How to store dango
- What to serve it with
- Hanami Dango Popularity
- Mitarashi Dango Popularity
- Bocchan Dango Popularity
- Dango calories
- Dango vs mochi
- Show us your creation
Dango Ingredients
To make our easy dango recipe, here are the ingredients you'll need.
For plain Japanese rice dumplings:
- Joshinko (Japanese rice flour)
- Shiratamako (Japanese glutinous rice flour)
- warm water
To make our tricoloured hanami dango recipe, you'll need to add the additional ingredients below:
- sugar
- Mugwort grass or matcha powder
- pink food colouring
- water
For our Bocchan dango recipe, you'll need to add the additional ingredients below:
- sugar
- anko red bean paste
- egg yolk
- matcha powder
- water
To make our Mitarashi dango recipe, you'll need to add some salt to the plain rice dumpling balls. However, most of the flavour will come from the sweet and sticky dango sauce.
To make a mitarashi sweet soy glaze, you'll need:
- soy sauce
- water
- brown sugar
- rice syrup
- mirin
- potato starch
Shiratamako is the best Japanese glutinous rice flour type to use as it gives a soft texture. Adding Joshinko rice flour will give it a stronger chew and stickiness.
However, if you can't find shiratamako or joshinko, you can replace these with glutinous rice and rice flour. Regular glutinous rice flour and rice flour will make the texture bouncy and slightly chewy.
We've also tried making mitarashi dango using only regular glutinous rice flour with silken tofu and the texture turned out soft and bouncy.
Using Tofu
Adding tofu is optional, but it adds a squishy soft texture to our dango recipe. We recommend using silken tofu to blend with regular glutinous rice flour for a more delicate bite.
Dango Recipe (Hanami, Mitarashi, Bocchan)
Ingredients
To make dango balls
- 65 g joshinko or rice flour
- 65 g shiratamako or glutinous rice flour
- 120 ml warm water
- 1½ tablespoon sugar for hanami or bocchan dango
- ½ teaspoon salt for mitarashi dango
To make tri colour hanami dango:
- 1 teaspoon matcha powder
- 1 teaspoon water
- 1-2 drop pink food colouring
To make tri colour bocchan dango:
- 3 tablespoon red bean paste
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tablespoon matcha powder
- 2 teaspoon water
Mitarashi Sweet Soy Glaze:
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 3 tablespoon water
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon rice syrup
- 2 tsps mirin
- 1 teaspoon potato starch or cornstarch
Cooking Instructions
How to make dango
- Combine Shiratamako and Joshinko flours in a bowl. Stir in warm water while mixing with chopsticks.
- When the flour clumps together, start kneading until the dough is smooth. Then combine into one huge dough ball.
- Roll the dough on a flat working surface and cut it into 3 equal big parts. Each part will be divided into 2 sticks of hanami, bocchan, and mitarashi dango.
For hanami dango:
- For the hanami dango portion, roll the dough and cut it into 3 equal parts. The 3 parts will be further divided into pink, white, and green parts. For the pink part, press on the dough to make a small well. Pour the red or pink colouring into the well.
- Knead the dough until the colour is consistent.
- Mix water with matcha powder to make a thick paste for the green part. Then, smear the green paste on the dough. Knead until the colour is consistent.
- For each coloured parts, divide them into 2 equal parts and roll them into balls. You should get 2 pink, 2 white and 2 green balls.
- Bring a pot of water to boil under medium heat, and then add the dango balls to the boiling water. Even when the dango balls float, they might not be cooked through the centre. Allow it to cook for at least 7-10 minutes.
- Once the balls are cooked, allow them to cool in cold water for a few minutes. Then, stick each ball through a skewer with the green at the bottom, white in the middle and pink at the top for hanami dango.
For mitarashi dango:
- For the mitarashi dango portion, simply roll the dough and cut it into 6 equal parts.
- Then, bring a pot of water to boil under medium heat, and then add the dango balls to the boiling water. Even when the dango balls float, it might not be cooked through the centre. Allow it to cook for at least 7-10 minutes.
- To make the soy glaze, first mix the potato starch and water in a bowl. Then, heat the brown sugar, rice syrup, mirin, and soy sauce in a saucepan over medium heat. Mix in the starch mixture to thicken the sauce. Once the sauce is thick, remove it from the heat.
- Once the balls are cooked, allow it to cool in cold water for a few minutes. Then, skewer the balls before glazing them with the mitarashi dango sauce.
For Bocchan dango:
- For bocchan dango, first divide the dough into 3 equal parts. We will make them into green, yellow and red bean parts. For the green part, first mix water with matcha powder to make a thick paste. Smear the green paste on the dough. Knead until the colour is consistent.
- For the yellow part, create a small well in the dough and mix in the egg yolk. If you want a bright yellow colour, make turmeric paste by mixing turmeric powder with some water. Knead until the colour is consistent.
- For the red bean part, you can either knead in the red bean into the dough. Or, you can just leave the dough white and smear the red bean paste over later when serving. Once all 3 parts are ready, divide each of them into equal parts and roll them into balls. You should have 2 green, 2 yellow and 2 red bean balls.
- Bring a pot of water to boil under medium heat, and then add the dango balls to the boiling water. Even when the dango balls float, it might not be cooked through the centre. Allow it to cook for at least 7-10 minutes.
- Once the balls are cooked, allow them to cool in cold water for a few minutes. Then, stick each ball through a skewer with the red bean at the bottom, yellow in the middle and green at the top for bocchan dango.
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
Calories have been calculated using an online calculator. Nutritional information offered on Honest Food Talks is for general information purposes and is only a rough estimate.
Japanase Dango Cooking Tips
To make some of the best dango at home, here are some of cooking tips based on our experience.
Making dango dough balls
First, if you want your dough to be extra soft and pliable, add silken tofu instead of water. Be careful not to add too much, since the final texture should be a soft play-doh.
Next, measure the flour on a kitchen scale to get the right flour mix for your dough. If you want perfectly shaped dough balls, using a kitchen scale also helps you measure the amount of flour. Each dough ball should be no more than 20 grams.
Another tip is to knead the dough with your hands until it becomes smooth enough to shape into a ball. The sensation of the dough should feel like you are pinching your earlobe.
Adding food colouring to Hanami Dango
Don't worry if the pink and green colours of your hanami dango don't seem bright enough when you knead the dough. The colours will turn out more vivid after you boil and cook them.
In our recipe, we added 3 drops of food colouring, which is why ours came out a little brighter. We also found that cooking the dango in the lightest shade to the darkest colour will avoid staining the water.
Soak your skewers
Soaking your skewers in some water beforehand will help you easily slide the dough balls on the stick.
Making bocchan dango
There are 2 ways you can infuse red bean in Bocchan. First, you mix red bean paste in the dough itself. Alternatively, you can make plain white dango, but then smear the outside with anko paste.
Bocchan uses a lot more matcha powder for a stronger matcha flavour and darker green colour than hanami dango. So we recommend using culinary grade matcha powder.
Bocchan usually uses egg yolk for the middle dango. However, we find that the yellow colour turns out very mild if you just mix in egg yolk. If you want a bright yellow colour like ours, we add a small amount of turmeric paste (turmeric powder mixed with a bit of water) to make a bright yellow dango. For 6 sticks, you need just a little of turmeric powder (less than ¼ tsp).
Charring sweet rice dumplings
You can give the dumplings a bit of char for taste if you have a kitchen torch. To do this, you can also use a broiler or use a non-stick frying pan to pan fry the surface of the dough balls.
We found that the dumplings can be sticky, so grease them first if you do not want them to stick together. The slightly burnt taste gives the wagashi a roasted flavour, which goes well with the sweet dip.
Ingredient Substitutes
As a lot of the dango ingredients are hard to find or expensive. Here’s a few substitutes you can use.
Using dangoko
While the best combination for dango remains joshinko and shiratamako flour, you can also find dangoko to replace both flours. This is sometimes cheaper and easier to find.
This flour is a premade combination of rice and glutinous flour, but the ratio depends on the manufacturer. We tried using it and found that the texture is firmer. This is most likely because there is more rice flour than glutinous rice flour.
Mochiko
Mochiko is another flour that you can use to replace joshinko and shiratamako. However, we found that using just mochiko will result in a soft, smooth ball. This is unsuitable for dango. They usually become too mushy and gooey when you have too much mochiko.
So, if you want the chewy, bouncy texture, you can buy non-glutinous rice flour and add mochiko in a 50-50 ratio. We do not recommend that you use just mochiko.
Note that these flours come from Japanese short-grain rice. Other types of flour, such as cornstarch, would result in a lumpy dumpling. Therefore, it is best to find suitable flour instead of substituting them.
Natural Food Colouring
Dango is a colourless dessert, but cooks add natural food colouring to it to make it look appealing.
Traditionally, ingredients such as purple shiso, salted pickled cherry blossoms, or the fruit of cape jasmine were what the locals used to colour the dumplings. However, in recent years, red food colouring has been used to dye it pink.
If you prefer natural food colouring, use beet juice or crushed freeze-dried strawberry or raspberry to make the pink hue.
Other Dango Sauce and Toppings
The most important thing to note about your wagashi is the dango sauce. You can add any type of sauce you like to dip in your dumplings. A popular version is anko or red bean dango. To achieve this, you just have to spread a layer of Japanese red bean paste over the dumplings.
Another popular version is mitarashi dango which has a sweet glaze sauce. You need sugar, soy sauce, mirin, water, and cornstarch to make this sweet glaze sauce.
You need to mix it all and boil it. Once the ingredients have dissolved, add one more tablespoon of water and cornstarch. Mix it until the sauce has a thick and heavy consistency, then turn off the heat.
You can also add matcha powder or use black sesame paste as a sauce to spread over the dumpling.
How to store dango
If you want to make the dough balls first, you can put uncooked dumplings in a single layer in an airtight container, then freeze for up to a month.
When you use them, boil the frozen dough balls without defrosting. Otherwise, you can boil them and let them cool down, then pat them dry and pack them into an airtight container. You can also freeze the cooked ones for up to a month, and when you want to eat them, just microwave or boil them till they are warm.
What to serve it with
Since dango is a light dessert, other Japanese sweet snacks such as dorayaki would be perfect to have with it. During sakura season, it would be nice to also pair it with some sakura mochi.
If you want to eat the dessert alone, get a hot cup of green tea. Since it is slightly sweet, the green tea will balance the cloying flavour. We also think the dumplings are also best eaten when they are freshly boiled.
Hanami Dango Popularity
Hanami dango is a sweet dessert that the Japanese eat during the Sakura viewing season. The name hanami translates to sakura flower viewing in English.
The dessert is available in three colours: pink, pale green, and white, just like the cherry blossoms. In the Spring, when cherry blossoms bloom, Japanese picnickers will pack their bags that include the dessert.
While the desserts available at confectionary stores are often coloured artificially, traditional makers infuse the dumplings with natural ingredients. Another theory is that the colours are so because pink represents sakura, white represents the fading snow, and green represents sprouting grass. All these colours are to celebrate the beginning of Spring.
A unique piece of history to note is that the Hanami Dango originated within the noble elite. The royal chefs introduced them in 1598 at a grand banquet held by a warlord. The nobles ate the sweets while appreciating imperial court music and poetry. It quickly gained popularity when cherry blossom viewing became popular, and people started to make them for picnics.
More recently, it's also made its way online. Players of Genshin Impact, a popular mobile game, can virtually cook the dumpling to restore their health.
Mitarashi Dango Popularity
Mitarashi dango is considered a popular version of this Japanese snack. Japanese cooks will dip the rice dumplings in a sauce with rice wine and plant starch, giving the dessert a salty and sticky taste.
In contrast to the hanami version, the Japanese do not eat them in any particular season and are a ubiquitous treat for in-between meal snacking. You can buy the skewered sweets at street vendors or convenience stores.
It's hard to verify when Mitarashi dango made an appearance. One version of its origin story was invented in Kyoto as an offering at a shrine during the Aoi Matsuri festival.
Aoi Matsuri is an annual festival with a parade where people dress in royal costumes and parade around the streets of Kyoto.
The Japanese believe that the festival originated sometime in the 7th century when many natural disasters. The Emporer made offerings to the gods, and the catastrophes stopped.
The round mochiko balls resemble human heads and limbs and symbolised a sacrificial offering back then. The locals present the wagashi as a goodwill offering to the deities. After prayers, the worshippers ate the mochiko balls after dipping them in soy sauce and glazing them. Later on, the Japanese added brown sugar in the Taisho era.
Many food blogs also claim that this version of the wagashi is the first. It was first served at a well-known tea house in Kyoto known as The Kamo Mitarashi Chaya. That is how the dessert got its name.
It has also made its appearance in the anime show Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba), gaining quite a cult following as the recipe is trending now.
Bocchan Dango Popularity
Bocchan Dango is a tri-colour dessert that is less known than the earlier two versions. It consists of three mochiko balls on a skewer. Each one has different ingredients infused in it, which explains the different colours.
The first one is red, prepared with red bean paste. The second is yellow, as it has eggs in it. The last one is infused with green tea and looks green.
There are no particular seasons for bocchan, but it is often associated with the city of Matsuyama. The sweet treat appears in Natsume Soseki's 1906 novel Botchan. The main character is a Tokyo academic who finds solace in the sweet dessert. Now, the dessert is well-known for bearing the character's namesake.
Dango calories
Each skewer of dango is about 160 calories. The calories come mainly from the dumplings, but the sauce and glazings may increase the overall calorie count.
Dango vs mochi
Dango has more rice flour than glutinous rice whilst mochi on the other hand is mainly made from glutinous rice. This difference means when you bite into the former dumpling, you'll get a chewier tender texture. Mochi, however, tastes slightly stickier and stretchier.
Both dango and mochi are colourless and not very sweet in their purest form. So, the Japanese like to add some natural food colouring and flavouring to make it more appealing.
You can easily recognise the dango dumplings as round balls skewered on a stick. Usually, the Japanese eat them with soy sauce or red bean paste.
Mochi, however, looks like a rice cake. Locals process glutinous rice by grounding, then steaming and pounding it into a sticky ball to make mochi. You will typically see mochi served on its own. If you would like to learn how to make it at home, we have an easy recipe on how to make mochi using a microwave.
Show us your creation
This Japanese wagashi is a sweet snack that is good for when you feel like having a small bite to open your appetite. They're also a visual treat. If you've tried to make them, why not tag us on Instagram @honestfoodtalks? We would love to see your final dish.
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