I absolutely love the tau suan from Zhen Jie Traditional Dessert @ 628 Ang Mo Kio Ave 4 and Tiong Bahru Tau Suan @ Tiong Bahru Market. Good consistency. Not overly starchy. Not too sweet. And the beans are never mushy. That’s exactly what makes a good bowl of tau suan for me. 🙂
I had eaten tau suan from elsewhere which had too much starch solution and too little beans. Also, there were some with the beans all disintegrated so the texture was simply flat and boring.
Steam The Beans, Don’t Boil Them
Godma told me if I wanted the beans to remain as whole and not mushy, one way to achieve that would be to steam the beans separately on their own instead of boiling them.
Use Pandan Leaves To Impart Fragrance
Just like most other Chinese desserts, it is almost essential to use pandan leaves to impart flavour and fragrance. When you’re steaming the green beans, make sure you spread the pandan leaves over the beans in layers. The more beans you steam at one time, the more pandan leaves you should use. Pandan leaves are so cheap anyway. 😀
Again, extra pandan leaves can be used to perfume the soup. Best to tie them into knots for easy removal later on.
Ta-daa! A delicious bowl of tau suan served with youtiao. You really need to eat tau suan with youtiao because it adds texture and bite. Otherwise, it can get really sickly to eat just tau suan on its own. Check out my Youtiao Recipe if you want to try making them at home.
Enjoy this Tau Suan Recipe!
- 600g split green beans, soaked in water for 2 hours
- 1.8 litres water
- sweet potato starch solution (combine 85g sweet potato flour & 250ml water)
- 140g honey rock sugar
- 100g pandan leaves
- fried dough fritters