Red Bean Paste
Red bean paste is a sweetened filling made from adzuki beans, Vigna angularis, cooked until the cotyledons disintegrate and then reduced with sugar and usually a fat to a firm, dark reddish brown paste.
Adzuki is a starch dominated pulse, carrying around 55 to 60 percent starch and 20 percent protein on a dry basis, and the body of the paste comes from gelatinised and partly retrograded bean starch rather than from any added gum. The colour is contributed by anthocyanins and by proanthocyanidins in the seed coat, which darken during the long cook, and the characteristic flavour develops from Maillard reactions between bean amino acids and the added sugar during the reduction step. Sugar and fat displace water as the paste is cooked down, giving a plastic solid that can be sheeted, rolled and enclosed in dough without slumping or bleeding into the wrapper.
It ships in blocks, pails, cartons and vacuum bags, at moisture in the mid twenties to mid thirties by percentage, and in a piped extrudable form for automatic depositing. Preservation rests on sugar concentration, low water activity and hot filling rather than on acidity, so most grades are held chilled or frozen and only heavily sugared or preservative bearing grades are traded at ambient temperature.
We source bulk Red Bean Paste from top China manufacturers for our partners. The manufacturer is 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 | Smooth homogeneous paste, free from seed coat fragments and foreign matter |
| Colour | Dark reddish brown, uniform |
| Flavour and odour | Characteristic cooked adzuki, sweet, no scorched, sour or fermented note |
| Total soluble solids | 65 to 72 degrees Brix |
| Moisture | 30.0 percent maximum |
| Total sugars | 45 to 55 percent |
| Fat | Declared by grade, 0 to 18 percent |
| Water activity | 0.82 maximum |
| pH | 5.5 to 6.8 |
| Lead | 0.2 mg/kg maximum |
| Total plate count | 1,000 cfu/g maximum |
| Yeast and mould | 50 cfu/g maximum |
| Escherichia coli | Negative in 1 g |
| Salmonella | Negative in 25 g |
Common Markets Grades
The first division is texture. Smooth paste, in which the cooked beans are screened and the seed coat fraction discarded, is the standard for moulded pastry and mooncake. Chunky or whole bean paste keeps the skins and some intact cotyledon and is used where visible bean is wanted. Between them sits a semi refined grade with the coarse fibre removed but a granular body retained. Japanese practice names the equivalents koshian for the strained paste and tsubuan for the chunky one, and both terms appear on export specifications.
Sugar level is the second axis, running from conventional pastes at 45 to 55 percent sugar on finished weight down to reduced sugar and polyol sweetened grades that depend on refrigeration. Fat content divides oil free pastes, used in steamed buns and drinks, from lard or vegetable fat pastes at 8 to 18 percent used in baked pastry, where fat keeps the filling soft through shelf life. Functional grades include bake stable paste, carrying additional starch so the filling does not boil out, freeze thaw stable paste adjusted against syneresis, and low water activity paste for ambient distribution.
Applications
- Mooncake fillings, moulded and baked, where the paste must hold a stamped pattern without cracking the skin
- Steamed buns and filled dumplings, in which the paste stays soft after steaming and cooling
- Dorayaki, taiyaki and pancake style confections, deposited between two cooked surfaces
- Mochi and glutinous rice sweets, portioned into balls as a centre
- Bread fillings and sweet rolls, sheeted or piped into the dough before proof
- Ice cream and frozen dessert ripples and centres, dosed for colour and bean flavour
- Bubble tea and blended drinks, thinned into a red bean milk base
- Chilled desserts, shaved ice bowls and layered cups, spooned as one component among several
- Baked pastry such as flaky rounds and tarts, enclosed in laminated dough
China Manufacturers of Red Bean Paste
Top Red Bean Paste manufacturers in China.
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
Red bean paste is a composite food, not a food additive, so it has no E number and no additive listing. The general hygiene and process control frameworks govern manufacture: Regulation 852/2004 with the general food law in the European Union and the preventive controls rules of 21 CFR Part 117 in the United States, where the hot fill and cooling step is normally documented as a critical control point. Adzuki bean and the sugars used are conventional foods with long histories of consumption in both markets, so no novel food authorisation is involved.
Additives carried in the paste are regulated individually. Regulation 1333/2008 authorises potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate, used in ambient stable grades, as preservatives E202 and E211 in the European Union, and 21 CFR 182.3640 and 21 CFR 184.1733 permit them in the United States. Modified starches used as bake stabilisers are authorised in both markets, and any added colour must be permitted for the relevant food category and declared. Labelling follows the composite food rules, with a full ingredient list and declaration of allergens introduced through the fat or flavour system, milk fat and wheat derived components being the usual ones. Where the paste is exported as an ambient shelf stable pack, the thermal process and pH determine whether the acidified or low acid canned food registration requirements of 21 CFR Parts 108, 113 and 114 apply in the United States.
Manufacturing Process
Dry adzuki beans are cleaned of stones, foreign seed and dust, then steeped in water for several hours. Many plants blanch and discard the first cook water, which removes part of the astringent seed coat compounds and lightens the finished flavour. The beans are then cooked, usually under pressure with steam, until the cotyledons break down entirely. For smooth grades the cooked mass is milled with water and passed through refining screens or a decanter that removes the seed coats and coarse fibre, leaving a wet bean sediment which is dewatered on a plate press or decanter centrifuge to a firm cake. For chunky grades this refining step is omitted and the cooked beans go forward whole.
The cake or the cooked beans are transferred to a jacketed kettle or a continuous scraped surface cooker with sugar and, where used, fat. Cooking with constant agitation drives moisture from around 60 percent down to the finished target, dissolves the sugar into the aqueous phase and disperses the fat through the starch matrix, while the prolonged heat develops the dark colour and roasted bean note. Preservative, flavour and any added starch are dosed late in the cook. The paste is discharged above 85 degrees Celsius and filled hot into cartons, pails or vacuum bags so that filling temperature acts as the pasteurisation step, then cooled quickly and held chilled or frozen.
