Sticky Rice Balls Three Ways (汤圆: 鲜肉, 芝麻, 菜猪油 | tang yuán: xiān ròu, zhī ma, cài zhū yóu)

Part of the fun of the New Year’s celebration is the preparation for and anticipation of the festivities. My mom’s tradition as a child was to lay out brand-new clothes for the New Year and make sticky rice balls. She told me that she was the rice-ball maker in her family. She would stay up late the night before New Year’s Eve to make black sesame sticky rice balls. She was the second youngest of six siblings and the best at shaping them. While I typically buy glutinous rice flour at a nearby Chinese grocery store, when my mom and dad were children, they made their own flour. Every year, they’d rent a special mortar and pestle and manually grind glutinous rice and water into a fine, powdery flour. The water, my dad said, is critical to making the flour super-fine. So, when I buy my own flour, I make sure to purchase one that is ground in a water mill.

Shanghainese enjoy rice balls in both sweet and savory preparations. I love both, so I included them here. All Shanghainese buns and pastries have simple identifiers for telling the difference between sweet and savory. Sweet versions are always round and smooth, while savory ones will have a tail hinting at the filling inside.