In East Asian cuisine, the adzuki bean is commonly sweetened before eating. In particular, it often is boiled with sugar, producing red bean paste (anko), a very common ingredient in all of these cuisines. It also is common to add flavoring to the bean paste, such as chestnut. Red bean paste is used in many Chinese dishes, such as tangyuan, zongzi, mooncakes, baozi, and red bean ice. It also serves as a filling in Japanese sweets such as anpan, dorayaki, imagawayaki, manju, monaka, anmitsu, taiyaki, and daifuku. A more liquid version, using adzuki beans boiled with sugar and a pinch of salt, produces a sweet dish called hong dou tang. Some East Asian cultures enjoy red bean paste as a filling or topping for various kinds of waffles, pastries, baked buns, or biscuits.
