Red Beans Paste

Red beans paste or azuki bean paste is a sweet, dark red beans paste originally from China. Also, they are very common among the Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese cuisines for desserts. The red beans are cooked until soft and then sweetened with sugar or honey vigorously mashed into the paste. The red beans paste with smoother texture is boiled with water until it becomes soupy. The slurry soup is then drained through a sieve to remove the skin from the beans and then sugar or honey is added. This paste is then used as a filling for many dessert recipes, such as steamed baozi cake, glutinous rice balls, moon cake, Korean steamed rice cake. Recently, I have used red beans paste to make jellied soy pudding. I use a crock pot to cook red beans, and then make the paste using a simple cooking, mashing method, and the result is excellent. Doubling or tripling my recipe's ingredients to make a large batch of red beans paste is acceptable because it freezes well, and then will always be available.
Ingredients:
1 cup dried red beans (adzuki beans)
4 cups water
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup vegetable oil or butter
1 tbs vanilla
Pinch of salt

Directions:
To cook red beans
In a 2 qt crock pot, add beans and water. Turn heat to low 5 to 6 hours.
To make beans paste
Drain the cooked beans and place into a sauté pan over low heat. Stir in sugar, honey and oil or butter;

 Using the masher to mash the beans and cook until the water has evaporated.

 Add vanilla, mix well and remove from heat.