Mitarashi Dango 日式醬油丸子

When I have dinner at home, I like having desserts at the end of a meal. This dessert can vary from a a piece of cake, cookies, to a cup of steamed milk with coffee, or lemon honey drink. And it doesn't have to be sweet sweet, sometimes savory sweets or a totally salty snack are just as satisfying and perfect for finishing a meal~

The savory sweet I made this time is Mitarashi Dango 日式醬油丸子~~
忽然很想念日式帶甜的醬油味!

So this sweet is a type of 'Dango' (sweet dumpling) made of both rice flour  (上新粉 or 台灣的在來米粉) and glutinous sweet rice flour (白玉粉 or 糯米粉). It is different from mochi (麻糬) or rice cake 年糕, which is purely sweet rice flour.

The ratio of rice flour to sweet rice flour can vary depends on individual's taste. Some people just make it 1 : 1. If you want dango to be more chewy, add more rice flour; if you'd like it softer and more sticky, use more sweet rice flour.

I used more rice flour this time, so the dango hardens when I put the leftovers in the fridge for the next day. I needed to microwave them to make it soft when eating. Next time I'll experiment with using more sweet rice flour.


Mitarashi Dango

Ingredients:

180g Joshinko (Rice Flour)
100g Shiratamako/mochiko (Sweet/Glutinous Rice Flour
2 tsp. sugar
1 cup (250ml) warm water
Bamboo skewers

Directions:

- Combine rice flour, sweet rice flour and sugar in a bowl.
- Pour in warm water at little at a time. Knead slowly until the dough becomes smooth.
- Knead and roll out small rice balls from the dough. I just kinda eyeball the sizes and made 28 rice balls in total. If you really care about having all rice balls to weight the same. Feel free to use the scale and divide the dough up many times to get the result.
- Bring water to boil in a pot. Cook all the rice balls in boiling water till they float on the surface, keep boiling for another minute or two.
- Remove rice balls from the pot and place them in to cold (ice) water. (I didn't use ice water)
- Drain the water. At the point you can start putting rice balls into bamboo skewers then grill them on stove top. However, I didn't have bamboo skewers on hand so I just pan fried them with a little oil in a skillet till they dried out and you can smell the fragrance of roasted rice.

Sweet Soy Sauce

1 cup water
1/4 cup soy sauce
2-3 Tbsp mirin
4 Tbsp sugar ( or to your own likeness)
1 Tbsp cornstarch (dissolved in 2 Tbsp cold water)

- Combine water, soy sauce, mirin and sugar in a sauce pan and bring to boil.
- Add cornstarch liquid and stir as it dissolves well and the sauce thickens over medium heat.
- Turn the heat of and let cool for a few minutes, it will thicken more when temperature drops.
- Spoon the sweet sauce sauce over the dango rice balls and enjoy!

I actually put the rice balls on the metal chopsticks to assimilate skewer effect for the picture purpose.

The dangos can just be served in a plate or a bowl with sauce drizzle over it~
I like it this way because I can keep adding more sauce as I go~ :P