Easy Tang Yuan Recipe with Sesame or Peanut Filling

Our tang yuan recipe makes festive Chinese glutinous rice balls that are chewy, soft and served in a warm, sweet soup. The soup balls are made using glutinous rice flour and water. You can stuff the glutinous rice balls with various sweet fillings, such as peanuts and sesame seeds, or keep them plain.

We'll show you how to make tang yuan in three parts: the dough, the filling, and the soup.

Our tang yuan recipe makes two types of fillings with peanut and black sesame seed paste. However, you can follow the same formula for making other filling flavours, such as lotus seed, red bean, and taro paste.

While traditional recipes use lard in the filling, we'll show you our dairy-free and vegan-friendly recipe using coconut oil. For vegetarians, we'll show you how to use unsalted butter instead.

Jump to:

• Tang Yuan Ingredients
• Tang Yuan Recipe (Peanut or Sesame Paste Filling)
• Chinese Glutinous Rice Ball Cooking Tips
• How to Store
• Cultural Significance
• Auspicious Meaning
• How to Make Colourful Tang Yuan?
• How Do You Eat It?
• Tang Yuan vs Mochi
• Calories

Tang Yuan Ingredients

For our tang yuan recipe, you'll need the following ingredients. If you want to make plain tang yuan without filling, you can skip the peanut and black sesame filling ingredients listed below.

Tang Yuan dough:

• glutinous rice flour
• boiling water
• room-temperature water

For the peanut filling:

• peanuts (or can replace with crunchy peanut butter, but then skip the step of toasting and grinding the peanuts)
• sugar
• unsalted butter or coconut oil
• salt

For the black sesame paste filling:

• sesame seeds
• sugar
• unsalted butter or coconut oil
• salt

For the brown sugar and ginger tang yuan soup:

• brown sugar
• ginger
• water

For the soy milk based tang yuan soup:

• soy milk
• water
• white sugar

Chinese Glutinous Rice Ball Dough

The Tang Yuan dough is very simple to make. It consists of only two ingredients: glutinous rice flour and water. As a result, minimal kneading is required, and the dough requires almost no rest time. This makes our recipe swift and low-effort.

The balls are traditionally white, but in modern times, they can be dyed any colour with food colouring, usually contrasting with the filling. The boiling gives the wrapper a delightfully slippery and chewy texture. 

Tang Yuan Fillings

This Chinese glutinous rice ball dessert has many fillings and flavourings. Traditionally speaking, the most common fillings are peanut and sesame seeds. However, a plain tang yuan recipe with no filling is typical since it requires less time, effort, and ingredients. Filling-less dumplings have the added advantage of being lower in calories.

Other classic fillings include Chinese red bean paste, lotus seed paste, and taro paste. More modern fillings are more varied and non-traditional. These include fruit jams, chocolate, fresh fruit, and even durian.

Tang yuan savoury fillings are also traditional but not as well known. Instead, savoury minced meat and mushrooms are commonly found as savoury fillings.

In our recipe, we have chosen two of the most famous and accessible to make traditional fillings, sesame and peanut.

Chinese Glutinous Rice Ball Cooking Tips

Here are some of our tips to follow when you're making our recipe.

Amount of water

The amount of water in our recipe is an approximation. Due to subtle differences in the flour's consistency between brands and humidity in the air depending on your location and season, sometimes you may need more or less water to make the dough. Gradually add the water as you knead the dough. If the dough feels too dry, add more water until it reaches the right consistency. The dough should turn out smooth and slightly stretchy, cool and moist when touched but not wet.

How to prevent the dough from drying out

When rolling the dough, it's a good idea to separate them into two or more portions and handle one at a time. Put the remaining portions under some cling film to prevent the dough from drying. 

How to stop tang yuan dough from tearing

Make sure you're not pulling the dough too much, as it isn't stretchy. Once it is too thin, it will tear. Repair it with water if this happens. However, the dough is prone to tearing easily since rice flour (even glutinous varieties) lacks wheat flour's stretchy gluten formations. If your dough cracks while working with it, use a wet fingertip to press the edges back together carefully.

When shaping the dumplings, make sure the filling is cold enough to handle. You can freeze the filling balls a little to aid in the formation process. If they are too warm, they will stick to your hands instead of the dough.

How to Store

Glutinous rice balls can be stored uncooked for up to 2 months in the deep freezer and up to 2 days once cooked in the refrigerator. Once cooked, they can be stored in an airtight container along with some serving soup. Make sure they do not touch each other or the walls or base of the container.

Line a sheet tray with parchment paper to store them in the deep freeze. Once assembled, arrange the glutinous rice balls spaced out on the trays and freeze them until solid. Then, transfer them to an airtight container. You can boil these directly. Do not defrost them.

Cultural Significance

Tang Yuan are an important and iconic festive dessert in China. The round shape of the dessert symbolises togetherness, and its name sounds similar to the Chinese word for union. For these reasons, Chinese families will often eat and cook together during festive times.

Usually, Chinese families will consume it during the Lantern Festival. However, you will also find it at birthdays, reunions, weddings, and during the Dōngzhì (winter solstice) festival.

History

It used to be called 'yuan xiao', which meant "first evening", referring to the first full moon after Chinese New Year. Apocryphally, during Yuan Shikai's rule, he changed the name to yuan xiao (元宵), which sounded similar to the words for 'remove Yuan' (袁消).

Thus, he changed the name to Tang Yuan (汤圆), which translates to 'soup balls'. Poetic. 'Yuanxiao' as a dessert still exists, but these two are markedly different from each other.

Auspicious Meaning

Eating glutinous rice balls on the winter solstice has the auspicious meaning of prosperity and union. However, making colourful tang yuan is also popular in Chinese households. This is because some people believe each colour has its own auspicious meaning in Chinese culture, too.

• White glutinous rice balls symbolise good interpersonal relationships
• Red glutinous rice balls symbolise joy.
• Pink glutinous rice balls symbolise love.
• Yellow glutinous rice balls symbolise wealth.
• Green glutinous rice balls symbolise health.
• Blue glutinous rice balls symbolise career.
• Purple glutinous rice balls symbolise wisdom.

How to Make Colourful Tang Yuan?

The sweet glutinous rice balls are usually white in colour, but they can be coloured to any shade of the rainbow using water-based food colouring in the dough. So, if you are worried about the flavour of the soup balls being marred by the addition of chemical colourants, have no fear! You can use many natural colourants to dye your dough to make it as pretty and tasty as possible. 

A list of a few natural dyes you can use to colour your Tang Yuan is as follows:

• Oranges for the yellowish-orange colour
• Dragonfruit, beetroot juice, strawberry or raspberry puree for red
• Butterfly pea powder for blue
• Purple potato powder or red cabbage for pink
• Blueberries for purple
• Spinach juice, pandan leaves or matcha powder for green

To turn most fresh fruits and vegetables into dye, you need a blender and water. Add enough water to turn it into a paste, blend, and then add enough for the paste to thin into a watery consistency. Let this liquid rest for ten minutes, then filter and use. This means that you will impart minimal flavour from the produce to the dough. We don't recommend using gel food colouring as it has a different taste and will ruin the texture of the dough.

How Do You Eat It?

Traditionally, Tang Yuan is served in a warm soup made using ginger and brown rock sugar. The soup is sweet and mildly spicy, complementing the umami-rich filling. In addition, the warm tang yuan soup helps ensure that the filling inside is smooth and liquid, completing the slippery wrappers.

To eat it, use a soup spoon to pick up a dumpling and bite into it. Drink the syrup in case the flavour of the filling becomes too overpowering. Another less sophisticated way is to eat the dumplings with a spoon all in one bite. This does require a significantly larger appetite, however.

A newer way to eat them is by deep-frying them for a crunchy outer layer. The filling is usually crunchy or crumbly to contrast the wrapper's texture. If fried, the wrapper is crunchy and crackly, while the filling may be smooth and sweet. If boiled in syrup, the wrapper takes on a sugary sheen and becomes very sticky. The flavour of the rice flour wrapper is simple but uniquely addictive. We believe you will enjoy it if you give it a try.

Tang Yuan vs Mochi

Many people believe that this dessert is similar to mochi. Although the ingredients of both dishes are identical (namely glutinous rice or rice flour and water), the preparation, cultural significance, and flavour differ widely. 

Mochi dough is beaten with mallets, making it light, creamy, and airy. You can eat mochi fresh or cooked. On the other hand, you cannot eat Tang Yuan raw as it is kneaded minimally. Its texture is not light but instead dense and slippery. 

It is served in broth to contrast with the fillings and wrapper. Mochi can be served in broth, as it is during New Year (a savoury vegetable broth called ozouni is used). However, it can also be served raw or cooked dry. 

Mochi fillings are generally not runny and can hold their shape, and mochi itself can be shaped in several attractive ways. On the other hand, Tang Yuan is shaped like a ball, and dumplings with different shapes are completely different dishes. 

The Chinese dish most similar to mochi is, in fact, muah chee (麻糍). This is made with shallot oil and glutinous rice flour. It is then topped with crushed peanuts or sesame seeds. It is a popular street food served with toothpicks and not in a broth. 

Therefore, mochi is entirely different from Tang Yuan, and the two should not be confused.

Calories

A single tang yuan with filling contains around 70 calories. An unfilled one contains approximately 30 calories. So you can reduce about 50 calories per dumpling by reducing the sugar and filling, which adds up quite a lot.

Unfortunately, since glutinous rice balls are a festive dessert, this dish can be high in calories. However, it is still a healthier Chinese dessert than snow-skin mooncakes eaten during the mid-autumn festival. Try these winter solstice sweet rice balls instead if you want to make a relatively low-calorie Chinese dessert.

We hope our recipe helped you learn more about this beautiful Chinese dessert, Tang Yuan. Traditional Chinese desserts are slowly gaining the recognition they deserve, and you, too, can be part of this culinary movement. The recipe is easy to make and delicious, so we hope you try it.

If you want to try more traditional Chinese dishes, let us show you how to make moon cakes or zongzi at home.