Our Cooking Plan

What is the best ingredient for Tangyuan?

Introduction  (Sylvia)

Eating Tangyuan is a must in many traditional Chinese festivals. 
As the Lantern festival is coming, it would be very interesting to make Tangyuan by ourselves. 
When looking at the recipe of Tangyuan, I wonder why it is suggested to use glutinous rice flour, instead of other flour. 
Therefore, our group would like to do an experiment to find out the answer.

Hypothesis (Priscilla)

Using different flour to make Tangyuan (湯圓) will affect their size and transparency after cooking

Variables (Hazel)

• Controlled variable: amount of water and flour used to make the dough, time of cooking, time of mixing the dough, size of each Tangyuan
• Independent variable: strong flour (高筋麵粉), soft flour (低筋麵粉), glutinous rice flour (糯米粉), rice flour (沾米粉), Wheat flour (澄麵)
• Dependent variable:  size and transparency of Tangyuan

Material (Priscilla)

1. 150g Glutinous Rice Flour
2. 150g Rice Flour
3. 150g Wheat Flour
4. 150g Strong Flour
5. 500mL Boiling Water
6. 10 bowls
7. Ruler
8. Pot
9. Electronic scale

Experiment Procedure (Lilia)

Ingredients/Sample	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J
Glutinous rice flour (g)	60	0	0	0	30	30	30	0	0	0
Rice Flour (g)	0	60	0	0	30	0	0	30	30	0
Wheat Flour (g)	0	0	60	0	0	30	0	30	0	30
Strong Flour (g)	0	0	0	60	0	0	30	0	30	30
Boiling Water (mL)	50	50	50	50	50	50	50	50	50	50
Total (g)	110	110	110	110	110	110	110	110	110	110

Table 1: Amount of ingredients in each sample

1. Mix the flours and boiling water according to table 1. Mix when cooled until the mixture form a dough.
2. Divided the dough into 10 similar portion and mold each portion into a ball shape.
3. Measure and record the diameter of each dough ball.
4. Boil the dough balls in boiling water for 5 mins with the lid covered.
5. Remove the dough balls from boiling water.
6. Measure the record the diameter of each cooked dough ball. Observe the colour and transparency of the cooked samples.

Reference (Sylvia)

Li, J. R., & Hsieh, Y. H. P. (2004). Traditional Chinese food technology and cuisine. Asia Pacific journal of clinical nutrition, 13(2). http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.843.5785&rep=rep1&type=pdf