![]() Whole dried lotus, whole dried lotus with the centre germ (green sprout at the centre of the seed) removed or halved lotus seeds dried with no centre germ. Dried lotus seeds will usually come in one of three forms. They are easy to find at your nearest Asian grocery/supermarket or your Chinese herbalist. Choosing and Preparing Lotus Seedsįor lotus seed paste, dried lotus seeds are what I usually use. ![]() ![]() Compared to commercially made lotus seed pastes, it will give less of a stick-to-your-teeth-mouth-and-back-of-your-throat feel and texture. I’ve also decreased the amount of oil and sugar to make it healthier while retaining a similar texture to traditional lotus seed fillings in mooncakes. This recipe uses only lotus seeds as its main ingredient with no fillers. Making lotus paste at home means you can control the purity of your filling, the texture, the amount of oil and the sweetness of the final product. In the case of mooncakes, it will still cost you an arm and a leg for a box of lotus seed mooncakes (total daylight robbery, if you ask me). The downside to commercially made lotus seed paste and commercial pastries with lotus seed filling, especially with mooncakes, is fillers such as potatoes and kidney beans are often used to keep production costs down. Lotus seeds, raw or dried, do not come cheap. They are great for those who don’t have time to make the paste or need it urgently for their pastries. Ready-made lotus seed paste is available at most Chinese supermarkets or grocers. Traditionally this is used in Chinese medicine for its anti-inflammatory properties and antioxidants. Nutritionally, the lotus seeds are full of plant protein, vitamins and minerals. Lotus seeds, which some people also call lotus nuts, are seeds from the lotus plant. Here is my version of the lotus seed paste I use for my mooncakes. While I love giving my taste buds a dose of nostalgia by following traditional recipes, I also love to put a healthier spin on my dishes and provide a vegan option for my green-eating friends. In keeping with tradition, many Chinese pastries and fillings, including lotus seed paste, are usually made with lard. mooncake season) just around the corner, I thought I would share my recipe with you. A bonus of this filling is it’s gluten-free. A well-made lotus seed paste is sweet, smooth, a little sticky and has a slightly caramelized flavour with an underlying tone of nutty fragrance unique to lotus seeds. Usually these have a deeper taste.Lotus seed paste (called lianrong ‘莲蓉) is a sweet filling usually found in traditional Chinese pastries such as sesame balls, steamed buns and mooncakes. ![]() There are different variations with some darker, close to black in color. Another common use of lotus paste is as a filling for lotus seed buns, a dim sum item.ĭue to the higher price of lotus seeds, commercially prepared lotus pastes may also contain white kidney bean paste as a filler. Lotus paste is used in Chinese cuisine as a filling for mooncake, baozi, and other sweet pastries. Some cooks choose to treat the dried lotus seeds with a lye solution before initially stewing them in order to shorten their cooking time. This produces a lotus paste that is tan coloured with a satiny sheen, which is rich, sweet, and silky with a slight fragrance of caramel. The lotus paste used by most Chinese cooks requires further preparation by dry cooking the sweetened paste over heat with caramelized sugar and vegetable oil. This produces a fine crumbly paste, which is then mixed with sugar or other sweeteners and often oil to produce a smooth, sweet paste. The paste is then watered down to a thin slurry and passed through a sieve and into cheesecloth, with which it is squeezed dry. First, the dried seeds are stewed in water until soft and then mashed into a fine paste. The process for making the paste is similar to that used to make smooth red bean paste. ![]()
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