If you’re worried the paste will be too sweet, you can add the sugar in batches and taste it intermittently to see if the sweetness is too your liking. Cook until the paste thickens considerably.Īdd sugar and mix into the paste. As there is a lot of water in the red bean paste at this stage, cook the paste over medium heat and stir continuously to prevent the paste from burning at the bottom of the pot. Conversely, if there’s still a lot of leftover liquid after boiling, pour some away.īlend until the red beans form a fine and smooth paste. If there’s no more liquid after boiling the red beans, add some. It won’t be as smooth but I assure you it’s good enough.Īnother note: Ensure there’s at least some liquid when blending your red beans.

Using the sieve method will give you a finer and smoother red bean paste, but if you want to save the hassle, you can also blend the red beans like I did. I actually tried to smash the red beans through a sieve so as to remove the skins, but it was way too time-consuming and messy. Note: In my recipe, I used an immersion blender to blend the red beans. The red beans are ready to be blended if you can smash it with your fingers. You can use a pressure cooker if you want to reduce the cooking time even further. Let it boil~ Let it boil~ Boil the red beans for at least 40 minutes until they become soft. A deep pot will be ideal because we will need to use an immersion blender to blend the red beans later. Put red beans and water in a deep pot and bring to a boil. Look how much it has expanded as compared to the one on the right that hasn’t been soaked! On the left is a red bean that has been soaked overnight. This will reduce the cooking time significantly. Highly crucial step: soak the red beans overnight for at least 8-12 hours. But if you want a healthier option, you can make your own red bean paste as you will be able to control the amounts of sugar and oil that go into the paste. I have to confess that while it isn’t difficult to make your own red bean paste, it’s rather time-consuming, so getting commercial red bean paste is definitely the easy way out. I wanted to get store-bought red bean paste, but couldn’t find it at the supermarket, so I decided to make it from scratch. It’s amazing, or should I say alarming, how much sugar and oil the commercial red bean paste is laden with, and that’s something I never really thought about until I made red bean paste for myself. Red bean paste is very commonly used in Chinese and Japanese pastries, from red bean pancakes to glutinous rice balls to dorayaki.

Red bean paste filling