🇨🇳 China and 🇭🇰 Hong Kong · Guangdong (Lingnan) and Hong Kong
He tao huChinese walnut soup
A creamy sweet soup of blanched, roasted walnuts ground to a paste and cooked with rice flour and slab sugar until lightly thickened. Served hot in small bowls.
Origin and history
Walnut paste belongs to the 'two sands, three pastes' of Hong Kong's basic sweet soups, found in nearly every dessert shop. The wider sweet-soup tradition began in the Lingnan region, where sugar was prized for countering damp heat; sweet-soup shops grew up in Guangzhou in the Republican era and the culture passed to Hong Kong. Many families also make the pastes at home because they are simple.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 6 small bowls
- Total time
- 1 h
- Hands-on
- 25 min
Ingredients
- 200 g2 cups (7 oz) shelled walnuts (he tao), raw, unsalted
- 35 g1/4 cup plain rice flour, not glutinous rice flour
- 250 ml1 cup cold water, to whisk with the rice flour into a slurry
- 750 ml3 cups water, 250 ml for blending the walnuts, 500 ml for the pot
- 75 g1/3 cup, packed (2.5 oz) Chinese slab sugar (pin tong), chopped, or dark brown sugar, about 1 1/2 slabs; one cook found this sweet, so start with less
Method
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1. Boil the walnuts in a pot of water for about a minute to loosen the bitter skins. Drain, shake dry and rub off what skin you can.
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2. Roast the walnuts on a tray at 150 C (300 F) for about 15 minutes, until golden in spots; watch closely so they do not burn. Cool completely.
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3. Blend the cooled walnuts with 125 ml (1/2 cup) of the blending water, adding the rest gradually, until a smooth paste.
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4. Whisk the rice flour with the 250 ml (1 cup) cold water until no lumps remain.
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5. In a deep, large pot, combine the slurry, the 500 ml (2 cups) water and the walnut paste. Heat over medium, stirring constantly, until it boils, then drop to a simmer.
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6. Add the chopped slab sugar and simmer about 10 minutes, stirring, until the soup is slightly thickened, creamy and still pourable. Lower the heat if it threatens to bubble over.
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7. Serve hot in small bowls.
Notes
- Walnut paste (he tao hu, written 合桃糊 in Cantonese) is one of the 'three pastes' with sesame and almond in the Hong Kong two sands, three pastes set. The pastes are made by grinding the nuts to powder, adding water and sieving, and Hong Kong sources call them good winter soups because they warm the body.
- The rice flour only thickens; mix it with cold water first so it does not clump. Use a deep pot, because the soup bubbles up.
- One lighter version uses 150 g walnuts, 15 g rice flour and 600 g water with brown sugar and 50 g evaporated milk (the author suggests coconut milk as a swap), blends the nuts with the flour and strains the mixture twice for a silkier bowl, and takes it off the heat as soon as it boils.
- It is rich; serve one small bowl each. Leftovers keep covered in the fridge for up to 3 days and can be rewarmed or served chilled.
- A Hong Kong sweet-soup shop that Michelin recommends sells walnut soup (he tao lou) beside almond soup and sesame paste.
Adapted from The Hong Kong Cookery: Chinese walnut dessert soup (adapted from The Wisdom of Chinese Cooking), MyKitchen101: walnut sweet soup dessert, and HK01: history of Hong Kong tong sui and the two sands and three pastes.
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