A sweet, nutty, runny filling sealed with a slippery, chewy wrapper, Tang Yuan (Chinese glutinous rice balls) is a delectable dessert not to miss.
Traditionally, Chinese New Year (Spring Festival, 春节) celebrations last 15 days and on the last day of this festive period, known as the Lantern Festival (or Yuan Xiao jie, 元宵节), a delightful dessert called Tang Yuan (汤圆, Chinese glutinous rice balls) is served as part of the family reunion meal.
With an interesting texture and a super tasty flavour, Tang Yuan is one of my favourite Chinese New Year dishes and one I cook all year-round as dessert for dinner parties.
A joy on your palate
Tang Yuan (汤圆) is kind of like round dumplings. The dough is made of glutinous rice flour and water, and the filling usually consists of ground nut, sugar and lard. It’s pure joy to eat freshly cooked Tang Yuan. After you bite through the slippery, chewy wrapper, the sweet, nutty and runny filling slowly fills your mouth. Absolutely delectable!
Two colours & two fillings
If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know how much I love colourful food and how I prefer dyeing food with natural ingredients. In this recipe, I make the Tang Yuan wrappers in two colours: white, the original version, and pink, using beetroot juice instead of water.
I also introduce two popular fillings: black sesame seeds and peanuts. Lard, widely used in Chinese desserts and pastries, is mixed into the filling for the flavour and fluidness. However, please feel free to replace it with butter or coconut oil if you prefer.
The key to great Tang Yuan filling
Using either black sesame seeds or peanuts for the filling, you will need to toast them first. Toasting peanuts is easy. When they turn lightly brown, you know they are ready. As for black sesame seeds, it’s a bit trickier.
Due to their dark colour, you could easily overcook them (therefore leaving a burnt flavour) without realizing it. Therefore, you need to keep a close eye while toasting. When the flat seeds plump up and are very easy to break when crushed with your fingers, they are done.
The best filling for Tang Yuan should be runny when cooked. However, you need the filling to be firm enough to handle when wrapped with the dough. So keep them refrigerated before assembling. To accelerate the process, you may also put them in the freezer for a short while.
Tips on perfect dough
The wrappers for Tang Yuan call for glutinous rice flour. It’s mixed with water (or juice for colour) to form a dough. Unlike normal dough made of wheat flour, this type of dough doesn’t stretch much, thus you might find it easy to crack.
Make the dough very soft and be gentle when handling. If cracks do appear during assembling process, simply wet the broken part with a tiny layer of water, then rub gently to reseal.
How to serve Tang Yuan
When serving Tang Yuan, you need to add some hot water from the pot to the serving bowl. This helps to keep Tang Yuan warm (thus the filling stays runny).
To make this dessert more sophisticated and tastier, I often replace water with a Chinese pear stew soup. Please refer to my recipe of Pear with Rock Sugar if you are interested.
Tang Yuan, Chinese glutinous rice balls (汤圆)
Ingredients
For the filling
- 80 g black sesame seeds or peanuts
- 2.5 tablespoon sugar, or to taste
- 40 g softened lard , or 30g butter
For the wrapper
- 130 g glutinous rice flour
- 3 tablespoon boiling water
- 4 tablespoon room temperature water, or beetroot juice
Instructions
Prepare the filling
- Toast black sesame seeds (or peanuts) in a frying pan over low heat (see note 1).
- In a food processor, grind cooled black sesame seeds (or peanuts) and sugar until they turn into a paste texture.
- Add lard (or butter). Mix to combine then keep refrigerated until the mixture is firm enough to handle.
- Divide into 20 portions. Shape each piece into a ball. Put them back in the fridge while preparing the dough.
Make the dough
- In a mixing bowl, pour hot water into glutinous rice flour while stirring with a spatula.
- Add room temperature water (or beetroot juice) little by little.
- Knead with your hand until a smooth, soft dough forms (see note 2).
- Divide and roll into 20 balls.
Assemble Tang Yuan (please refer to the video below)
- Flatten a piece of dough into a round wrapper with your fingers.
- Place a ball of filling in the middle. Gently push the wrapper upwards to seal completely (see note 3).
Cook Tang Yuan
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Gently slide in some Tang Yuan (see note 4).
- Push them around with the back of a cooking spoon to prevent them from sticking to the bottom of the pot.
- When all the balls start to float on the surface, cook for a further minute.
- Dish out (along with some liquid) and serve warm.
Store Tang Yuan
- Freeze Tang Yuan right after they are assembled.
- Firstly you need to lay them on a tray lined with parchment paper to freeze. Then put them in an air-tight bag when totally frozen.
- Follow the same cooking procedure (do not defrost).
Thank you for your recipe! It’s my first time making tong yuan by myself and the skin came out perfect! I used a packaged sesame paste to cut on time. Next time I’ll make my own paste. I am so thrilled that your recipe is super simple and perfect on the proportions!
Hi Wei.
I made two sets of these. We loved them, but I had one problem when making them.
I put the sesame seeds and sugar in the blender and didn’t get a paste, just dust. When mixed with lard it still wouldn’t squash into a ball. So I added a little water.
They cooked well. But I was wondering if I needed more lard, or something?
Thank you for your wonderful site.
Louise
Hi Louise! You need to blender the sesame seeds further. They first appear to be sandy and would become sticky and oily if you leave the blender running for longer.
Can you make these in batches to freeze then boil when you want to eat it?
Yes! As I’ve mentioned in the recipe, you can freeze them and cook without defrosting.
Hi there! Can I use beef lard in this recipe?
Thank you!!
Yes you can!
Great recipe!
I made this twice already, the second time I added a bit more butter to make the filling more runny and a pinch of salt to enhance the flavor even more. I love these, they are very comforting!
I definitely recommend the recipe 🙂
Love your twists Mel! Glad you’ve enjoyed the dish.
Good recipe! Makes dough with perfect consistency
Thank you Jess for trying my recipe! Glad you’ve enjoyed.
Thanks, absolutely love recipes using “black sesame seeds” (芝麻糊, 芝麻卷, etc.).
My pleasure Lin! Black sesame seeds make great sweet treats. I adore it too.
Would unfilled tang yuan still be considered tang yuan? Im making black sesame soup tomorrow and saw that some folk put tang yuan in it, but due to lack of time in the morning i am planning on making them smaller and unfilled. Thanks for the recipe! sorry for the weird question! I am new to Chinese cooking!
Tang Yuan refers to the filled ones but unfilled ones do exist. It’s perfectly fine to add small glutinous rice balls without filling to a soup.
Hello!
I just want to share a few things that I changed in this recipe (Oh, I would suggest too😅):
1. Use melted butter instead of softened butter and add water until it is runny to make the filling runnier after it is cooked. You just have to put it into a plastic bag and freeze it. Then, cut it into small cubes, roll them into spheres, and put it back into the freezer. This way it is also easier to divide the filling evenly as well.
2. To the dough, add enough water to make the dough stretchy, this way, it is easier to work with when you are wrapping the filling.
3. I put brown sugar into the water because I like the taste of it😁 also because water doesn’t really have any flavor
Also, shaping the dough into a bowl shape instead of flattening it is easier
The only problem I had was with the dough. It was too crumbly and very hard to work with, but great recipe overall!
Thank you 莹莹 for sharing your experience and ideas!
I added some brown sugar and few slices of ginger to the soup. Flavour is even better that way.
Yes, a gingery sweet soup works very well with these balls
Followed the recipe exactly.
The filling is good and the dough was easy to make and work with; however, the ratio of dough to filling making 20 balls resulted in very thick dough that took forever to cook. They cooked so long that the balls began to crack and release the filling into the boiling water.
Very sorry to hear that Morti! I’m not quite sure why your dough wrappers turned out to be very thick. One thing I’d like to point out is that even if the wrappers are a little thicker, you wouldn’t need to cook them very long as this type of dough is very easy to cook through. If they crack, that’s a sign of overcooking.
These worked out great, my greatest critic (my teenage daughter!) was very satisfied and now we have more in the freezer for another time which is my kind of dessert.
Thank you!
That’s wonderful to hear! It’s one of our family’s favourite desserts too. We have it regularly, not just for special occasions.
Hi! Can I use all-purpose flour in place of rice flour?
All-purpose flour is made of wheat whereas rice flour is made of rice. So they are not interchangeable.
Hi, I’m making these right now! Can I make the balls and leave them in the refrigerator for a few hours before boiling, or must I freeze them?
You can leave them in the fridge for a while (cover well with cling film, etc.). Happy cooking!
My dough turned out to be quite dense. It still worked out when I cooked right away but I did add a little more water to make it smoother. Hard to fill with filling though. Any tips for doing it better next time?
The flour-water ratio varies a little depending on the brand of the flour and the humidity. This type of dough is very forgiving. Please feel free to adjust. If you find it too dense, simply add more water then knead again until you get the desired texture.
Hi, I was wondering if I could use ground sesame powder for the filling? Would the proportions be the same? Thank you!
I’ve never used ground black sesame for this recipe. If it’s purely made of black sesame seeds (check the package to see if there is other ingredients, such as starch, sugar), I assume it works. To test the ratio, the best way is to make a very small batch and taste if it’s right for you. If not, adjust accordingly. Hope this helps!
Hi Wei, thanks so much! I tested it out by eyeballing everything and it turned out wonderful! Happy Winter Solstice! 🙂
That’s great to hear! Hope you had a wonderful Winter Solstice too!
Hi Wei, I loved reading through this and looking at the beautiful photos of the tang yuan. I am definitely going to try this recipe out. Also, I was wondering if you could let me know the date of when you posted this tang yuan post because I want to use this as a source for one of my projects.
Hi Ruby! This post was published in February 2018
Hello, Can i change glutinous rice flour to glutinous rice?
Thank you
Hi Linh! Glutinous rice can not be used as a substitute for this recipe.
Hi Wei!I do not have a good processor.What can I do?
Hi Savannah! You can crush the toasted sesame seeds in a mortar too. Otherwise, place them in an resealable plastic bag then crush with a rolling pin. You wouldn’t get a fine paste using these two methods but the taste would still be good.
Hi!From the comments,they must be delicious!I’m about to make mine.Before that,I have a question.Can I use Nutella as the filing?How do I do that?
Hi Ayreen! You could use Nutella but you need to firm it up a little for easy shaping. For example, add some coconut flakes to Nutella. Mix well then chill in the fridge for half an hour or so.
Can the black sesame paste be directly used as a black sesame bao filling?
Yes you can use this black sesame paste to make filled buns. For the dough, have a look at my post on Mantou (plain steamed buns)
Hi, I just made the glutinous rice balls using your recipe and they turned out delicious! It was a fun activity with my mom. Thanks for your recipe!
You’re welcome Regan! Glad to know you and your mom have enjoyed it!
We just made this! Unfortunately I made the dough and then had to go out for dinner, and I think the cool down made the dough less workable. Will not delay next time. Also will reduce the sugar a bit, we prefer a bit less sugar 🙂 but a successful first try! Thank you!
Hi Ming! Unlike the normal dough made of wheat flour, the dough for Tang Yuan needs to be used straightaway. Hope your next try will be perfect for you!
Brilliant! Can’t wait to try.
Another incredible dessert! These look very festive!
You’ve been so supportive Heddi! Thank you! I just can’t resist colouring my food. Haha!