I believe my family has a pressure cooker, but I have no idea how to use one. Could you please elaborate on how you steam beans with one?

I live in Southern California, where almost anything grows in this climate. I’m very fortunate. My azuki plants are not very big, but they seem to be growing out instead of up, like my black beans do. I will post pictures as soon as I figure out how and where it is appropriate to post pictures on this site. I just recently joined. ^_^

I’ve lately been steaming the beans for amanatto in my pressure cooker with a metal colander, with great success. They don’t crack or break much, if at all. However, it’s crucial that such steamed beans are gently simmered in the sugar mix and the sugar mix thrown out. Otherwise, the gassy sugars remain and the beans and are just unpleasant. Buuuttt, steaming is an easy way to get picture perfect beans for amanatto. I would only really recommend steaming with a pressure cooker, otherwise, they take hours, upon hours to steam.

If you’re growing and drying your own beans (you grow girl!), a pressure cooker pays for itself in three batches of anko. Mine is a godsend in the summer especially, and having it really cuts down on time and energy.

I bet the bean skins blended up would work well in thickening sauces and soups, and would be good in a creamy bean dip. I’m unaware of a name for the cast off bean skins, but knowing Japanese frugality, they probably use them for something along with a cute name.

Keep Cooking!!

I used azuki beans I bought at Mitsuwa. I bought the whole, uncooked beans for two reasons: one, I wanted to grow my own azuki beans (I also garden), and two, I wanted to make anko from scratch. I made both tsubushi-an and koshi-an. You never did say if you can make aka(i) koshi-an, but I did it anyways. I understand that shiro-an is preferred in wagashi because one can color it.

The azuki I planted (which was months ago) are growing and doing well. It will be a while before they grow beans, but I look forward to it. I don’t know why I waited for so long to cook the rest of the beans I didn’t use for planting, which is more than 90% of the bag. I didn’t use the whole bag, either, for cooking for my first try. (It’s a big bag.) I was planning on making amanatto, too, but the beans were broken too much to go through the hassle of picking out the perfect beans, and plus I ran out of sugar… I’ll try it again some time, and next time I will be extra careful not to boil the beans so that the skin breaks.

I wasn’t sure how many times I should have changed the water while cooking the azuki. I changed it about four to five times, but it seems like it was adequate because my anko tastes just as good, if not better, than what I had tried at Mitsuwa. I also kept the bean skins – my byproduct of making koshi-an, because it seemed to me to be a waste to throw away edible food. I like the skins, too, and I thought it might be neat to try recipes where you add the bean skins for texture. I had already tried adding the bean skins to cream cheese and a spicy rhubarb sauce, and it was very yummy.

Since tsubu-an is the “whole” bean paste, and koshi-an is the smooth bean paste, what would – or is – the bean skin byproduct of koshi-an called?

Again, thanks for all your hard work in this site! I love it all!

[...] 1/2 cups anko, room [...]

[...] 1/2 cup shiro an [...]

What I learned from my konashi (similar to nerikiri) experience is to have a bowl of sugar syrup around to moisten hands with. Don’t use too much, however, a tiny dab of sugar syrup is all ya need. Oh, and keep your an and finished nerikiri moist by putting ‘em in air tight container. Have fun and tell me how they turned out!

If you need some ideas for how to use your shiro an, e-mail me. Or, put the shiro an in a clean, empty, dry ice cube tray, cover the tray with plastic wrap and then freeze it. Pop out the frozen shiro cubes, put ‘em in a freezer safe bag and store em in the freezer till you need it. Defrost it on low for 15-30 seconds, stirring often.

Did you like the shiro an? It’s yummy on dango. I mix crushed black sesame seeds into the shiro an along with some sugar syrup to create goma an. Izz delissssh.