My wife’s favorite food is dango but we can never make dango at home that’s as soft as the ones we had in Japan. The inside is almost always doesn’t cook fully (unless I use tofu, more on that soon). One recipe that we tried was [this from Just One Cookbook](https://www.justonecookbook.com/mitarashi-dango/) which is okay but doesn’t cook fully. Yes, we bought the correct rice flours from the Japanese market. So I tried making the dango with silken tofu instead, as [some recipes online](https://www.okonomikitchen.com/mitarashi-dango/) suggest. This was perfectly cooked and tasty immediately afterwards, but it was disgusting after being refrigerated. Literally inedible.
Plus, I get the feeling all these places in Japan that had perfect dango don’t use tofu: I just couldn’t taste it. So how on earth do I ensure I get perfectly cooked dango without tofu? One idea that I had was to cook the dango sous vide, which would guarantee they’d cook right, but I can’t find a temperature or cooking time online. Maybe I could just cook it like I would cook rice sous vide (200 degrees F for 33 minutes is what I’ve found online so far). But Japanese people don’t use sous vide machines to cook dango! What is their secret?
7 comments
I hope this will help.
https://youtu.be/pyXhZvxQBVQ
You have to use something called shiratamako made from rice flour
Have you tried only using shiratamako flour instead of the mixture? I saw one recipe suggest that, I was going to try it, but haven’t gotten around to it.
As a child of a Japanese mom growing up in the US, I recall she used to make dango from all shiratamako. Just looked up a recipe online in Japanese which did have mitarashi dango with 80 grams of shiratamako and 80 cc of water (put into boiling water & cooked for 3 minutes)
I know 100% shiratamako isn’t exactly what Japanese dango places do but it may work as a substitute of using a home kitchen?
There are probably a few Japanese homecooks channel on YouTube you can search.
https://youtu.be/HtHUmgPuIaA
https://youtu.be/c1aD0HI24PE
https://youtu.be/CH_u8Pjw5oM
emmymadeinjapan is an American Japanese cooking content creator. She can probably direct where to get Japanese ingredients in the US.
https://youtu.be/uSOW9e7eOgQ
Edit: emmymadeinjapan is Chinese American who used to live in Japan.
Not cooked fully? Like powdery or grainy?
Adding the initial boiling water to the flour is very important. The water should come to a hard boil and pour into the flour while still hot. Chopsticks are good for initial mixing, but later use your hands (or a wooden spatula like me) and a folding motion to get a good mix. As an extra precaution, you could let the dough rest covered for 20 minutes to an hour to get an even saturation.
I cook dango in batches. Enough to cover the surface of the water in a single layer without crowding. When they float, I usually tap the dumpling. Sometimes they sink and don’t come back up quickly. After floating steady for 3-5 minutes, then I scoop them out. Dango shouldn’t fall apart too quickly even if left in for an extra couple of minutes. I scoop dango 3-4 at a time, so some have been boiling for a minute or so extra.
Also, I don’t shock with ice water. Just cold water. This gives residual heat more time to penetrate, but the dough should have been cooked most of the way when the initial boiling water was added to the flour.
I’ve made many dangos using either shiratamako powder by itself or dango powder by itself. Tofu is very optional.