Tiger Sugar Rice Balls

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These days, Tiger Sugar and their wildly popular brown sugar boba milk drink along with ancillary products like ice cream pops, milk egg rolls, and even popcorn are a common sight in Chinatowns (and elsewhere!) along with a multitude of wannabe competitors. Two of their more intriguing creations include their innovative take on classic filled rice balls, in this case Black Sugar Salted Egg Custard and Black Sugar Sesame.

Filled rice balls have been around forever, long before there was a Tiger Sugar, and are readily available in the freezer case at Asian markets. Tiger Sugar’s interpretation capitalizes on their signature flavor: since the outer enclosing layer is made from glutinous rice, it’s a little chewy like boba and tastes like their famous drink, but less intense.

There are ten 1¼-inch spheres to a package; all you need to do is boil them for a few minutes (they expand a bit), drain them, and as the instructions direct, “put them into iced fresh milk or sweet soup”. When you see the phrase “fresh milk” in Chinatown, it simply refers to standard whole milk; “sweet soup” comprises any of the many varieties of Cantonese tong sui: sweet, warm dessert soups.


Black Sugar Salted Egg Custard Rice Ball. You might recognize the distinct flavor profile of salted egg yolk from visits to your favorite dim sum parlor or Chinese bakery – so many buns and balls filled with creamy salted egg! Unlike a moon cake, you won’t find a whole egg yolk in there; this filling is made from palm oil, powdered sugar, bean paste, milk powder, egg yolk powder and then, finally, salted egg yolk powder – but it’s rather tasty nonetheless.


Black Sugar Sesame Rice Ball. The filling is sweet and unquestionably black sesame, its texture is a little crunchy and gritty in a good way. Again, most enjoyable.

IMO, they’re both good with a bit of milk poured over, but not tossed into a whole glass of fresh milk. Also IMO, they don’t play well with ice cream – trust me, I tried. But I keep looking for more ideas because I really do like them; I’m convinced there’s an ultimate way to use these in addition to sweet soup. Any thoughts?
 
 

5 thoughts on “Tiger Sugar Rice Balls”

  2. I LOVE tang yuan (& all qq sweet things of any nationality) but despise the soup they’re served in– this is is totally nontraditional, but only you might appreciate my getting into my breakfast habit. Here goes:

    I treat them as a hot cereal/ bubur cha cha kinda thing (or sometimes cold cereal with tang yuan held in a separate bowl of hot water esp in summer, w/ cold elements for contrast). Always have multiple flavors on hand, cheap AF, have tried to make- went horribly, don’t. All components are optional. Deluxe Meat Market on Elizabeth has homemade TY including GREAT coconut I’ve never seen anywhere else, New Kam Man has durian. Various Asian supermarkets cycle in and out of esoteric flavors and mini balls/ sweet potato taro smaller nubbins similar to those seen more expensively at Meet Fresh and the like. All regularly have dried boba or canned grass jelly if you wanna go there.

    The “milk” is whatever dairy beverage I have on hand for coffee etc, or the Trader Joe’s or Harmless Harvest coconut smoothie, or thinned cream of wheat. To all I add a couple drops of pandan or ube extract. Recently Kalyusians had bubble tea powders divvided up into very overpriced small pouches including avocado, durian, honeydew, etc– I’ve never less than a 2 lb own-a-boba-shop-sized bag that made me loathe to buy them, this got me multiple flavors suited for a single person albeit twice the price point. Their recipe seems inaccurate, I do it less sweet to taste, 2-4 tb, sometimes just a spoonful in a dairy bev, in hottest summer a full on avocado smoothie was fun.

    Every few months I go to Elmhurst to restock on Thai desserts/ a tray of sapin sapin from 3 aunties, Pata Market, and Phil-Am foods and freeze. I work near Chinatown and get kuih/ che there from Tan Ting Hung & occasionally Kuih Cafe or Kopitiam. In both cases, both the bits in separate bites and the more pudding-y things covered with coconut milk work really well– could rate them all but won’t get into that– the “coconut stuff” at Pata Market are a must, tho. There are also the frozen Thai desserts made by Aroy-D and the like. I’ve also just used homemade coconut rice or that packaged pandan pudding I’m sure you know.

    I add a few to a couple different flavors of tang yuan if I have them, or sometimes if I have a lot a sampler platter of goodies and no liquid except the tang yuan’s hot water to keep them hot. Then I usually add fruit–personal faves persimmon, lychee/longan/rambutan, a stone fruit, or mango, depending on season, and if liquid a handful something for crunch– slivered nuts and/or coconut chips and pretty much always dry cereal, something neutral and not too sweet, usually Chex or Crispix but again this is all me.

    OK, little insane but an idea for you– give it a whirl!

    • Wow! You have just succeeded in naming dozens of my favorites like Kopitiam and Kuih Café, markets like New Kam Man, Deluxe Meat Market, Pata, Phil-Am, and Kaluystan’s, flavors like durian, pandan, and ube, desserts like sapin-sapin, kuih, and anything qq to name only a few – pretty much everything you wrote actually. Not to mention your creative preparations. I am amazed!

      Thank you for writing!

  3. Very important, forgot to say– they are oddly AMAZING as savory dumplings w/ the usual savory toppings, eg showered with chili oil, soy, black vinegar, scallions/ cilantro. I often do multiple flavors of frozen dumplings w/ some veg as a meal and ALWAYS include them (and in my case nutritional yeast or cheese haha). Chinese Cooking Demystified features a deep-fried version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycHfpOtNR1I

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