[Chinese Recipes] Red Bean Soup

Red bean soup(hong dou shui红豆水) is a Chinese popular sweet dessert soup (tang shui 糖水）made with red azuki beans and I love red bean soup very much. I remember my grandma who was a Cantonese always cooked up a storm for the family during the weekends and sweet soup was served even after a heavy lunch. She loved to prepare at least one dessert like black sesame sweet paste soup (chee ma woo芝麻糊), peanut sweet paste soup (fa sheng woo花生糊), mung bean soup (lui dou shui綠豆水) or red bean soup (hong dou shui红豆水). Her red bean soup was one of our family's favourites as it really tasted delicious. 

The sweet soup had a smooth and unique texture. Besides adding dried tangerine peel which is a must to give a nice citrus flavour, she also added some glutinous rice in it and simmered the sweet soup for 1 to 2 hours under charcoal fire. How I wish pressure cooker was available during that time so she could save a lot of time making sweet soup (tang shui糖水) and traditional Chinese soup (bao tang煲汤). I think that the charcoal fire has to do with the texture of the sweet soup. Anything cooked with charcoal fire always tasted much better, especially if it's double boiled soup (don tang炖汤). But now, who's going to do that but I have neighbours who still have a small Japanese charcoal fire stove and they sometimes cook with that, especially when they make the Chinese dumpling (zong zhi粽子) for the Dumpling Festival.

Ingredients: 

1 cup Red beans
1/3 cup Glutinous rice
8g Dried tangerine peel (soak in water for 10 mins)
1.8 Litre Water

Rock sugar to taste

Method:

Rinse and drain the red beans and glutinous rice then place them in the pressure cooker.

Add dried tangerine peel peel and water into it and bring to boil.

Give the red beans and glutinous rice a few good stirs before covering the lid. This is to prevent the glutinous rice from sticking to the pot.

Just heat the up to the required pressure and turn to medium low heat.

Cook for 30 minutes until steam releases through the safety valve.

Lastly add rock sugar to taste.

Serve the red bean soup hot or cold.

This recipe and image sources are referred in website: Anncoojournal.com. Thanks so much!