Perfectly Golden Sesame Balls

Here is recipe 2 of 2 for July’s 12 Months of Dim Sum project! Recipe 1 of 2 was for the Instant Pot Sweet Red Bean Paste here. Like I mentioned in my previous post for sweet red bean paste with adzuki beans, I have been eating Chinese food all my life. One of my favorite desserts ever is the famously addictive sesame ball – which is why I chose this Perfectly Golden Sesame Ball recipe as July’s main dim sum recipe!

Sesame balls are my perfect dessert except it’s hard to stop at just one! It’s big, round and perfectly golden on the outside which is covered with sesame seeds. When biting into the sesame ball, there’s a nice crunch and then it becomes so soft and hallow which is when you taste the filling – my favorite being adzuki bean paste! It feels like a true indulgence but without being too decadent. I’m bad at describing things but the closest thing I can think to is a donut hole (bad example I know), despite being fried, not being as heavy or overly sweet – depending on the filling inside the sesame ball. Ha! And speaking of doughnuts, the sesame ball has way more flavor than the Chinese doughnut that usually comes with congee at dim sum – which is a favorite of mine too don’t get me wrong…it just gets a little too heavy for me sometimes and I end up feeling sleepy afterwards!

Today’s perfectly golden sesame ball recipe is veganized and adapted from Tiffy Cooks. I chose to try her recipe because she posted a super cute picture of her mom and grandma and how can I say no to that?! There’s nothing better than when a grandchild shares a meaningful recipe and sweet narrative relating to the family. BTW, if any fellow bloggers are reading this, keep going with your personal narratives. I love them.

I did also take notes from the recipe of the people I personally consider to be The Royal Family of Food Blogging and omg they got me fantasizing about making a giant sesame ball in the future.

So how do we make these perfect golden sesame balls? Well here we go:

These perfect golden sesame balls are made with glutinous rice flour. For real, there is no negotiation or substitution. Glutinous rice flour or bust! I personally like this kind the best:

Just don’t even try to get regular rice flour, you will screw yourself. Get something that’s actually Asian. Take the time to track it down. Also, glutinous rice flour is also called sweet rice flour. But, again, it’s not the same as plain “rice flour” or “brown rice flour” even if it says “great for baking”. Do not be fooled. Glutinous rice flour only.

From top left clockwise: organic cane sugar, glutinous rice flour, just boiled hot water and raw sesame seeds. Pay attention. Do not try substituting any of these ingredients.

The sugar has to be organic cane sugar, of course, for it to be vegan.

Like I mentioned above, glutinous rice flour or nothing. Not rice flour. Not brown rice flour. No other random flours. Only glutinous rice flour which is also under the name of sweet rice flour.

The water absolutely has to be hot as well. So what I do is just boil enough in my kettle when I’m done gathering the other ingredients.

The sesame seeds can only be raw since the cooking method here is deep frying. Do not burn your sesame seeds. Make sure the seeds are raw! So no toasted sesame seeds please! Raw raw raw!

To start the process, put your sesame seeds to the side to avoid confusion.

First we are going to mix the sugar and glutinous flour. Do not mess this up because I did this during one of my batch tests by forgetting to add the sugar at this point. I didn’t realize until I’d already mixed the glutinous rice flour and hot water, rolled it, portioned it and shaped it into little bowls. I knew I was screwed but I decided to mash it all up together anyway and add the sugar with a little bit of water to help the dough become to workable.

Of course it didn’t work out. It messed with the dough so bad that the sesame balls turned out rock hard. So pay attention.

You will add your hot water to the organic cane sugar and glutinous rice flour and use chopsticks to mix. Add a tiny bit of glutinous rice flour if it’s too sticky or hot water if it’s too dry. Obviously add in small increments of either to not mess with the dough too much. Let it cool down and then shape it into a ball. You know..your usual dough ball that’s nice and springy. Not too dry or too sticky.

You’ll end up rolling it out into a stick and divide it into 8 balls. So the easiest way is to use a dough cutter and split it in the middle. Then split both halve in half and so on.

When we have our eight pieces, we will roll each piece into a ball and then shape them like little pinch pots but with a rounded bottom. The sides should be thin enough where you can still close the ball over the filling but not so thin to where it starts to look translucent. That’s too risky when deep frying. This is where the filling will go.

This next step is for the filling, if we choose to have filling. We’d need half a cup of filling to fill all 8 sesame balls. You will take a heaping half tablespoon of filling and add it to each ball. I tried doing more of an assembly line where I shape everything first but I found that shaping and filling each ball one at a time gave me better results. If anything was too dry though, I’d just add a little bit of water to help the dough be more workable.

Then we gently tuck the filling inside and pull the dough over the top like so.

I’m still working on neatness but really try to get the filling secure inside so it doesn’t spill out. After we seal the ball, gentle roll it to secure it. I’m looking at this and in retrospect that’s honestly kind of thick. I tend to do that with dough in general but I’m improving little by little. I guess I also do tend to like thicker doughs unless we’re talking about pizzas.

we then get we sesame seeds we set aside earlier in one little bowl. Then next to it we put our other little bowl of half a cup of water. This is our assembly line. One by one we gently roll each ball in water then cover it with sesame seeds. I personally found that putting each ball on the bed of seeds and then sprinkling the other parts made it easier for the seeds to stick as opposed to just rolling around it in the small bowl.

When done, the raw sesame balls should look like this.

Obviously, not ever single sesame seed is going to stick but just try your best!

We are going to fry these balls in a pot with a large bottom so we don’t have to do batches. If you have a smaller pot, then obviously you will have to do them in batches. I use about 4-5 inches of oil in my large 8 quart pot. Please be careful and do NOT have too much oil. Seriously that can cause a fire. Don’t do it.

There are two stages of frying but don’t worry. You don’t have to remove the sesame balls to transition or anything. Here we go:

First stage: We first fry the sesame balls at 300° until they float. Obviously when you add the sesame balls, the temperature will drop so feel free to adjust so that the temperature gets back up to 300°.

It took me about 5-6 minutes until it started to float. Throughout the whole process, we gently move the balls around so they don’t stick to the pan.

Second stage: We immediately turn up the heat to 350° and fry it for another 6-7 minutes until it’s a perfect light golden color, which is when we immediately remove them so they don’t burn. They still cook even after removing them so you don’t want that deep golden color while it’s still in the pot.

When our perfectly golden sesame balls really do look perfect, let them rest on a paper towel-lined plate.

When cool enough, serve!

12 Months of Dim Sum Recipes:

January 2021: Vegan Siomai

February 2021: Instant Pot Congee

March 2021: Vegan Potstickers with Ginger Scallion Tofu

April 2021: Crispy Golden Fried Tofu

May 2021: Toasted Cumin Scallion Pancakes

June 2021: Gluten-Free Asian Dipping Sauce

July 2021: Sweet Red Bean Paste and Perfectly Golden Sesame Balls

Print