Bean Paste Stuffing
Bean paste stuffing is a cooked, sweetened pulse paste used as a filling in Chinese and wider East Asian baking. The base is adzuki bean for red bean paste, with white kidney bean, mung bean and lotus seed used for the pale varieties, cooked soft, reduced to a paste and then fried down with sugar and edible oil until it holds together as a mouldable mass.
Its behaviour as an ingredient is controlled by moisture and sugar rather than by any gelling agent. Cooking gelatinises the bean starch and breaks down the cell structure, and the subsequent frying with sugar drives off water and drops the water activity to a level at which the paste is stable and will not weep into the surrounding dough. Oil added during the fry coats the starch particles, which is what gives the smooth, slightly glossy body and stops the paste drying to a crumb during baking.
The traded product is a firm, plastic paste, red-brown to almost black for adzuki grades and ivory to pale yellow for white bean and lotus seed, with a sweet, gently roasted bean flavour. It comes in blocks, buckets and vacuum bags, is extrudable and portionable at ambient temperature, and firms when chilled. Bake-stable formulations are made at lower moisture so that the filling neither boils out of a mooncake nor collapses inside a steamed bun.
We source bulk Bean Paste Stuffing from top China manufacturers for our partners. The manufacturers are in Shandong. A smaller requirement can ship in a combined container with other ingredients.
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- Function
- Bakery ingredient
Specifications
| Item | Specification |
|---|---|
| Appearance | Uniform smooth or coarse paste, free from foreign matter |
| Colour | Red-brown for adzuki grades, ivory to pale yellow for white bean grades |
| Odour and taste | Sweet cooked bean, free from sour, burnt or fermented notes |
| Moisture | 20.0% to 30.0% according to grade |
| Soluble solids | 55 to 70 degrees Brix |
| Water activity | 0.75 to 0.85 |
| Fat | 4.0% to 12.0% according to grade |
| pH | 5.5 to 6.8 |
| Fineness for smooth grade | Passes 60 mesh |
| Lead | 0.2 mg/kg max |
| Total plate count | 1000 cfu/g max |
| Yeast and mould | 50 cfu/g max |
| E. coli | Absent in 1 g |
| Salmonella | Absent in 25 g |
Common Markets Grades
The first distinction is texture. Smooth paste is sieved so that bean hulls are removed entirely, giving a fine body used in mooncakes and filled pastries, while coarse paste retains hull and whole or broken beans for a rustic texture in buns and rice cakes. The second is the pulse: red adzuki paste is the standard, white kidney bean paste is the neutral base that carries added flavours and colours, mung bean paste is used in seasonal pastries, and lotus seed paste is the traditional filling for the most expensive mooncakes.
Beyond that, grades differ on sugar and fat level and on intended process. Mooncake grades are made at low moisture and higher solids so they survive baking without boiling out, steamed bun and rice cake grades are softer and moister, and frozen dough grades are formulated to resist syneresis through freeze and thaw. Reduced sugar versions built on maltitol or maltose syrup, salted egg yolk and nut inclusion variants, and versions made with vegetable oil rather than lard for dietary reasons are all standard offerings.
Applications
- Mooncake fillings, in both the baked Cantonese style and the snow skin style
- Steamed buns and filled mantou, where the paste must hold shape through steaming
- Baked pastries and Chinese flaky cakes, deposited before the pastry is folded
- Rice cakes, mochi and glutinous rice dumplings
- Taiyaki, dorayaki and pancake style filled products
- Sweet soup and dessert bases, thinned with water and sugar
- Bread fillings and swirl breads, extruded onto sheeted dough
- Ice cream and frozen dessert inclusions
- Biscuit sandwiching and filled wafer products
China Manufacturers of Bean Paste Stuffing
Top Bean Paste Stuffing manufacturers in China.
- Dezhou Luying Foods Co., Ltd.2 ingredients in the directory
- Jiuhe Food (Dezhou) Co., Ltd.2 ingredients in the directory
Company names and logos are the property of the manufacturers themselves. They are listed here because our own directory records them as producing this ingredient. A listing is not an endorsement by them, and we do not represent them or speak on their behalf.
Regulatory Status
Bean paste filling is a composite food rather than a regulated additive, so it carries no additive number of its own. In the United States it is produced under the general requirements for a food manufacturing facility, with preventive controls and a full ingredient declaration; any preservative, colour or sweetener used must be cleared for that use, and lard or dairy fat where present affects both labelling and the acceptability of the product in particular markets.
In the European Union the product falls under general food law and the food information regulation, with additives limited to those authorised for the relevant food category under Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 and declared by function and name or E number. Sulphites used in the processing of some pulse ingredients must be declared above the labelling threshold. Codex has no vertical standard covering bean paste fillings, so composition is a matter of specification between the parties rather than of regulation, and mycotoxin and heavy metal limits for the pulse raw material apply through the general contaminants rules.
Manufacturing Process
Dried beans are cleaned over screens and destoners, washed and soaked, then boiled or pressure cooked until the cotyledon is fully soft. For smooth paste the cooked beans are pulped and washed through a fine sieve or a decanter, which separates the starch and protein solids from the hulls. The resulting slurry is dewatered on a filter press or in a centrifuge to give an unsweetened wet paste known as raw bean paste. Coarse grades skip the sieving and go straight from cooking to the fry with the hulls in place.
The wet paste is then cooked out in a jacketed or scraped surface kettle with sugar, maltose syrup and edible oil added in stages. This step both sweetens the paste and evaporates it to the target solids, and the endpoint is judged on moisture and on the way the paste pulls away from the vessel wall. Colour, flavour and any permitted preservative are added at the end of the cook. The hot paste is cooled quickly on a cooling belt or in a scraped surface cooler, then extruded or portioned, metal detected and packed in blocks, buckets or vacuum bags, with pasteurisation of the sealed pack used where a longer ambient shelf life is required.
