Tanghulu is a super viral traditional Chinese street dessert that pairs fresh fruit with a sweet and crunchy candy coating on a stick. You don’t have to travel abroad to eat these hard-candied covered fruit at home. Learn how to make tanghulu at home with our tips and tricks, learned through trial and error.
What is tanghulu?
Tanghulu is a Chinese treat that consists of candied fruit on a bamboo skewer. Traditionally, tanghulu is made with Chinese hawthorn berries, known for their sour flavor, which pair perfectly with the sugared candy coating. You’ll now find Korean and Japanese versions of these treats that use other fruits, such as strawberries, grapes, kiwi, and mandarins.
Which fruit to use
Traditionally, tanghulu uses Chinese hawthorn berries because they are sour and tangy. I prefer this sweet and tart combination to other versions I’ve tried, which often use ripe fruit, because they’re too sweet for my taste.
When we visited the street food stalls outside of the Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto, we tried Japanese tanghulu with very ripe strawberries and found that I could only eat two pieces. By making tanghulu at home, we get to pick which fruit and level of sweetness we want to eat.
For this recipe, we like:
- Strawberries that are slightly under ripe are firmer and slightly tart.
- Mandarins that are seedless, so you don’t bite into any hard pieces of seed while eating.
- Blackberries that are firm without any broken skin.
- Green grapes because they are tart and more sour than other varieties.
Fruits that we wouldn’t recommend are yellow mangoes, bananas, and watermelon because their water content and soft texture make it difficult to skewer and dip into the syrup.
Equipment
To make tanghulu at home, you will need:
- A candy thermometer or an instant-read thermometer to monitor the sugar syrup and reach the right temperature for making hard candy at 300°F
- A wide sauté pan or wok makes dipping easier
- A tall and wide cup for an ice bath that’s tall enough to submerge the skewers for dipping
- A silicone liner with a sheet pan or plate to place the candied fruit to prevent sticking to surfaces
How much water & sugar for tanghulu
Use a 2:1 ratio of sugar to water for the sugar syrup. This ratio is perfect for making syrup because you don’t have to wait too long for the water to evaporate from the pan. We’ve tested a 1:1 ratio before, and it took over an hour to reach our target temperature of 300°F–most of the time was spent evaporating water. Less water also means fewer foaming bubbles while dipping.
How long does it keep
Tanghulu should be made and eaten within the same day because it quickly becomes a sticky mess at room temperature. We’ve tried refrigerating tanghulu, and the candy coating starts to melt and becomes stickier the longer it sits.
Tips for making tanghulu
- Use less ripe fruit if you want a “not too sweet” balance of sugar and tangy flavor. Less ripened fruit is also firmer and stays on the skewers more easily during the dipping process.
- Dry the fruit as much as possible and skewer gently so that the fruit stays in place during dipping. If you move the fruit around too much during skewering, they may slip and slide during syrup application.
- Use a thermometer to monitor the temperature of the sugar syrup until it reaches 300°F. Ideally, using a candy thermometer is good because it stays in place and doesn’t disrupt the syrup too much. However, you can use an instant-read thermometer to check occasionally, just try not to move the syrup around too much (this can cause crystals and lumps in the syrup). Once you reach this heat, lower the heat or move the pan to a cool burner.
- Due to the finicky nature of sugar syrup, we recommend only making 4-6 skewers of fruit per batch. The first couple of skewers have a thin layer of candy, but they quickly thicken and become harder to work with due to crystallization.
Tanghulu
Ingredients
Fruit
- blackberries
- strawberries stems removed
- Mandarin orange peeled
- green grapes
Syrup
- 2 c sugar
- 1 c water
Water bath
- water
- ice
Equipment Used
- measuring cups
- knife and cutting board
- bamboo skewers
- paper towels
- saute pan
- candy thermometer, or instant-read thermometer
- metal spoon
- cup, for ice bath, tall enough for dipping skewers
- sheet pan with a silicone liner or parchment paper
Instructions
- Clean and prep the fruit. Cut the green stems off the strawberries. Peel the Mandarin orange and separate them into individual pieces, removing as much of the white pith as possible without breaking the skin.
- Use a paper towel or kitchen towel to dry the fruit as much as possible.
- Skewer three to four pieces of fruit onto each stick. Skewer fruit, leaving about ⅛ inch of space in between each fruit. This space makes it easier to eat–when you finish biting one piece of fruit, it gives you some room so you don't break the sugar on the next one. I like to skewer fruit so its longer dimension is parallel with the skewer. This makes fruit on the skewer more stable and less likely to spin while you're coating it in syrup.Refrain from moving or spinning the fruit on the skewers after intially skewering them because this damages them and increases likelihood they will spin during dipping into syrup making it hard to get a complete coating.
- Prep the work station: a. Pan with skewered fruit b. Sheet pan (or plate) with a silicone liner (or parchment paper) for finished tanghulu c. Tall and wide cup with cold water and ice for dipping d. Saute pan for sugar syrup with a metal spoon and thermometer
- Combine the 2 c sugar and 1 c water in a sauté pan over medium-high heat and use a candy thermometer to monitor the heat. The goal temperature should be 300°F. Do NOT stir or move the sugar water during heating too much to prevent crystallization.
- Heating up sugar syrup takes about 20-30 minutes, depending on your stove. Be patient and watch the thermometer. Foaming is normal, and you don’t need to do anything.
- Test if the sugar syrup is ready by dipping one clean skewer into the syrup and immediately dipping it into the ice water. If it firms up and hardens immediately, it’s ready to dip. Lower the stove heat to low.
- Moving quickly, dip one skewer into the syrup in a continuous twirling motion. You can use a metal spoon to coat the fruit, but remember you only need a thin layer.
- Immediately dip skewer into the ice bath and spin it in your fingers to cool it faster. Do this until the skewer is cool to the touch.
- Transfer to the silicone liner / baking sheet and repeat with the other skewers.
- Serve immediately. These aren't really meant to keep in the fridge or counter as the quality doesn't last.
Like this recipe? Subscribe to my newsletter!
