In Japan, Tyi and I tried dango for the first time and it was a little odd to us because one of the “glazes” they put on top was a soy sauce one. Although it wasn’t a taste we were used to, there was something about it that made it so interesting because it was a combination and flavor we had never had before. I’ve been doing some summer reminiscing lately and I decided to try to make some of our own. For those who don’t know what dango is, it’s basically a sweet glutinous rice ball dumpling similar to Chinese “tong yuan” except instead of having them in soup, they have them on skewers!
Now, clearly, ours don’t look as pretty as the ones we saw in Japan but in our defense, they still tasted the same. Lil’ bun and brother deer tried mitarashi sauce for the first time and found them to be a little funky at first but after a while, they were hooked!
Ingredients (makes 12):
1 cup glutinous rice flour
150g silken tofu (OR 90mL soy milk/water)
Mitarashi Sauce:
3 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon mirin
Not a fan of mitarashi? use sesame seeds, ground peanuts, red bean paste, matcha paste, kinako as a topping instead!
Let’s get rollin’
1. Put the glutinous rice flour into a bowl. Add the tofu.
2. Stir everything together with a fork to form a dough. When the mixture comes together and feels like it is the softness of play-dough.
3. Form the dough into 12 equal balls.
4. Bring a pot of water water to a boil and add the dough balls into it. The dango is ready when they float to the top.
5. Use a slotted spoon to scoop them out of the water.
6. When they’re cool enough to touch, skewer the dumplings.
7. Enjoy! Roll them in the toppings…
or enjoy alone with mitarashi sauce…
The first batch we made (photo below) didn’t hold it’s round shape because we didn’t add enough tofu to the glutinous rice flour so make sure your dumplings can hold it’s shape when they’re rolled into balls before you start boiling them.
