Thermal Cooker Sweetened Red Beans 焖烧锅蜜红豆

Cooking raw red/Azuki beans to soft usually needs a long heating process. However, with the use of a thermal cooker, the stove heating time can be cut down substantially.  Furthermore, without stove heating, It minimizes the frequency of having to stir the beans. This helps to keep the beans in whole.

Yield: about 300g sweetened red beans

Ingredients

100g organic red beans 有机红豆

1 blade pandan leaf (optional) 香兰叶

50g raw sugar 黄砂糖

20g rock sugar 黄冰糖

Directions

1. Rinse and soak red beans with about 2cm deep of water. Cover and place the bowl of beans and water in the fridge for overnight soaking.

2. Drain away the water after soaking the beans overnight.

3. Pour the beans into the inner pot of the thermal cooker. Add water to about 2 to 3 cm above the beans.

Add a blade of pandan leaf.

Cover and bring to a light boil for about 10-15 minutes.

4. Transfer the inner pot to the outer thermal cooker and cover with a lid quickly to prevent heat loss to the surroundings.

Let the red beans self-cook in the thermal cooker for about 1 hour.

5. After 1 hour, open the lid and try crushing one to two beans with your fingers. If the beans are not soft enough, heat the inner pot over the stove for about 5 minutes at low temperature. Return the inner pot to the outer pot, and let it stays for about 20 to 30 minutes.

6. After the second simmering, try crushing the beans again. If the beans are soft, then pour about 80% of the red beans soup into a bowl, leaving behind about 50 to 80 ml of soup in the pot.

You can keep the red bean soup collected for another recipe later.

7. Add 50g of raw sugar to the red beans, stir briefly and bring to a light boil.

8. When the mixture starts to boil, add in the rock sugar and stir briefly. Let the rock sugar dissolves in the simmering heat.

As the red beans are quite soft, try not to stir too much in order not to break the beans.

9. After the rock sugar has dissolved, turn off the heat and let the remnant heat evaporates the excess water.

Carry the pot to swirl the ingredients to facilitate the drying up process. Try not to stir with a spoon.

10. Transfer the red beans to a container. After cooling to room temperature, seal with a lid and keep in the fridge until needed :)

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Bonus recipe:

Add raw sugar to the warm red bean soup and stir to dissolve the sugar.

After the sugar has dissolved, pour in fresh milk to make yourself a cup of red bean milk drink 😄

Sugar and milk to be added according to your preference.