Fermented Rice Wine Sweet Potato Rice Balls — Late Nights, Cold Hands, One Warm Bowl
By Vivian
Why You'll Love It
Late nights finishing work, a drama that runs to midnight, or the first day of your period when your hands and feet refuse to warm up — that's exactly when the craving for a warm, sticky-sweet bowl hits.
Sweet potato brings the fiber, fermented rice wine builds blood, and the whole thing is gentle enough to drink on your period. A few bowls in, your cheeks are pink again — the kind of colour that shows.
No long ingredient list, no long simmering. Breakfast, an afternoon snack, a midnight bowl — it works for all three, and it's comfortable in any season.
Ingredients
| Ingredients | |
|---|---|
| 150 g (5 oz) glutinous rice balls (tangyuan), store-bought is fine | 1 medium sweet potato |
| 1 small bowl fermented rice wine (jiuniang), with its juice | a little rock sugar, to taste |
| a pinch dried osmanthus flowers | 1 small handful goji berries |
| 1 tsp starch slurry (cornstarch : water = 1:2) | water, for simmering |
Ingredient Notes
- Use a honey-type sweet potato — it's sweet enough that you can skip the sugar.
- Store-bought rice balls save a lot of time; if you roll your own, dust them with starch so they don't stick.
- Pick rice wine with plump grains and clear juice — a sour one will ruin the pot.
- Goji berries go in last; cooked long they turn bitter.
- Dried osmanthus goes in off the heat, which is how the perfume survives.
Instructions
-
1
Get everything ready first: peel the sweet potato and roll-cut it into even chunks. Even sizes are what make them all cook through at the same moment.
-
2
Put the sweet potato in a pot, add cold water to cover, bring it to a boil over high heat, then turn down to medium-low and simmer 10 minutes — until a chopstick slides straight through.
-
3
Tip in the rice balls and keep the heat at medium-low, stirring gently so they don't catch on the bottom. When every ball floats, they're cooked through.
-
4
Add the goji berries and the fermented rice wine, stir, and cook 1–2 minutes. Turn the heat down, drizzle in the starch slurry while stirring, and take the pot off the heat the moment the soup turns slightly silky — skip the slurry if you like it thin.
-
5
Scatter in the dried osmanthus, sweeten with rock sugar to taste, and stir until it dissolves.
-
6
Chewy little rice balls, sweet potato perfume, a faint breath of rice wine and one thread of osmanthus — soft, not too sweet, and honestly ridiculous.
-
7
A note: fermented rice wine is already sweet, so taste before you add sugar — you can leave it out entirely. And a honey-type sweet potato will sweeten the whole pot on its own.
Recipe Notes
Fermented Rice Wine Sweet Potato Rice Balls
Fermented rice wine sweet potato rice balls: sweet potato simmered until a chopstick slides through, then glutinous rice balls, fermented rice wine and goji berries go in, finished with a thin starch slurry and a pinch of osmanthus — warm, sticky-sweet, and gentle enough for the first days of your period.
Time Needed
Prep Ahead
- Peel and roll-cut the sweet potato into even chunks so everything finishes at the same time.
- Rice balls can be rolled and frozen ahead — they go straight into the pot from frozen.
- 【Yield】1 sweet potato plus 150 g rice balls makes 2–3 bowls.
- 【Key ratios】sweet potato to water about 1:3; the slurry is starch : water = 1:2, and one small spoon is plenty.
- 【Heat】10 minutes at a medium-low simmer once the water boils, until a chopstick goes through; the rice balls are done when they all float.
- 【Rice wine】goes in at the very end — 1–2 minutes and off the heat, or it turns sour.
- 【Storage】best eaten fresh; the sweet potato can be steamed ahead and kept 2 days refrigerated.
- 【Common failures】a cloudy soup means the balls weren't cooked through or the starch went in too early; too thick means too much slurry.
Nutrition (per 100 g, estimated)
| Calories | about 106 kcal |
|---|---|
| Protein | about 1.5 g |
| Fat | about 0.4 g |
| Carbohydrates | about 24 g |
| of which sugars | about 11 g |
| Fiber | about 1.2 g |
| Sodium | about 15 mg |
Estimated from the recipe amounts, not lab tested. One bowl is about 300 g, about 318 kcal. Energy converted at 4 kcal/g protein, 9 kcal/g fat, 4 kcal/g carbohydrate.