3-ways of Glutinous Rice Balls for Winter Solstice!

It was Winter solstice last Thursday before Christmas actually. The Chinese celebrate this day sometimes more importantly than Chinese New Year, to some.

My mum has always been celebrating this occasion since I was young. She would diligently make her own glutinous rice balls or what we call tang yuan in Mandarin Chinese. The round shape symbolises tuan yuan (meaning reunion and completion). So this occasion is a time to give thanks thst we still have each other on the family.

There are many many ways of cooking the glutinous rice balls aka tang yuan. Basically different Chinese dialects cook it differently. My mum cooks it savory way with minced pork, scallions and egg drop soup. She would wrap a small piece of sugar in it so when we bite the ball, the sugar will also burst out its flavour. It is very good combo to eat with savory soup. One of my friends even added longetivity noodles into her soup to eat with the glutinous rice balls. Genius move!

I was feeling extra lazy this year. At the same time, I was grieving over a landslide tragedy in Malaysia at a camping site which took away many families and lives. Honestly at that time, I could not bring myself to think of reunion because I saw so many families could not have theirs. Nevertheless I told myself to buy the frozen glutinous rice balls from the supermarket, still. I chose the one with black sesame filling, which is my favorite.

It is really convenient as we need not even defrost it but just boil up a pot of hot water and drop the balls in. When they are cooked, they will float up to the surface. Then I made the soup with some pandan leaves, pieces of ginger, brown sugar and some cane sugar my mum passed to me.

I thought it will be nice to have some balls in another soup so I added some into a bowl of cold soy bean. It was very refreshing and my youngest son loved it.

I saw on Facebook reels someone pan fried their glutinous rice balls with sesame oil and then drizzled water to steam it. When it is browned and crisped on the outside, they dipped it into some peanut crumbs or powder. I tried replicating it but it wasn't too successful as mine tend to stick together. However the flavour of it was actually good.

With thw winter solstice which apparently had the shortest night and the longer day, I actually remember the landslide victims in prayers especially their family members who remain alive. At the same time, it also reminds me to actually treasure my family.

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