This post is for Ruth, who requested a recipe for buchi.

Ruth, there are variations to this; what I’m giving you right now is the simplest one with the shortest ingredient list.

To make 12 sesame balls, you need:

1 1/2 cups sweet rice flour (a.k.a. glutinous rice flour or Mochiko)
more or less 3/4 cup water, plus more for moistening your hands
1/4 cup sweet red bean paste (homemade or store bought)
about 1/2 cup sesame seeds, for coating the balls
peanut or other high-heat oil for deep-frying

Put the sesame seeds in a platter or bowl. Form 1-level-teaspoonfuls of the bean paste into balls. Set aside on a plate.
Combine rice flour and water (a bit at a time) in a bowl, stirring with a wooden spoon until homogeneous. The dough will not come together like bread dough, but will be rather crumbly. If you can take a small amount in your hand, squeeze it and it stays together, then you know you’ve got enough water in there.

Take a heaping tablespoonful of the dough and form it into a ball in your palm, about an inch in diameter. Make an indentation in the middle with a round implement or your thumb — I used the handle of a baby spoon — large enough to accommodate the bean paste ball. Drop the ball in and enclose in the dough, pressing gently to make sure none of the bean paste peeks through. At this point you may find it helpful to moisten your hands while you continue to form the dough into a ball shape. Make sure you seal all fissures or cracks that appear in the dough. You will have a ball about 1 3/4 inch in diameter.

Moisten the balls, if they appear to be dry, with some water, then dip into the sesame seeds and coat well. Preheat the oil in a deep-fryer or wok to 350°F.

Deep-fry the balls, 2-3 at a time, carefully dropping them into the hot oil so they keep their shape. If necessary, shape them with two wooden spoons. It is essential to do this in the beginning stages of cooking before the dough hardens and crisps. Cook the balls until the dough is cooked through, ball has puffed a bit, and sesame seeds are golden, about 3 minutes total. Remove with a slotted spoon or Chinese skimmer/strainer. Drain on paper towels and serve warm.

Try it and let me know if you like it!

There are many variations to jin dui. You can add mashed sweet potatoes or taro to the dough, about 1/2 cup mashed taro or sweet potato for every cup of rice flour you’re using — add water judiciously. This will give you a nicely-textured dough that’s a bit easier to work with. If you want the dough to be crispier, replace 1 tablespoon of the water with vinegar. If you want a puffier buchi, use cooked sugar syrup (made with equal parts sugar and water) instead of just water. Or, if you want, use half-coconut milk-half water to make the dough. If you are feeling particularly industrious, make the dough from scratch using glutinous rice soaked overnight, then grind in a food processor. If you have a grinder, you may also want to try grinding sweet brown rice into flour and use that instead of storebought rice flour.

Other fillings can be used instead of the customary bean paste, such as chopped up peanuts. You can add chopped “baby coconut” — Philippine buco — to the bean paste filling, or even macapuno, or those things by themselves, minus the bean paste. (Buco is available in Asian stores in the frozen section, and macapuno is available preserved in syrup in jars, also in the Philippine section.) You can also use char siew. Or try the the filling used for Filipino Brazo de Mercedes! The biggest and yummiest sesame balls I ever ate were on a Japanese ship — they were 3 inches in diameter, and filled with a ground pork mixture.

Here are more Jin Dui/Buchi recipes for you to try:

Lily Ng’s Jin Dui
Jas’s Jin Dui
Kai’s Baked Buchi

Original post here.