Mung Bean Pork Mooncake

While mooncakes originated in China, they radiated all throughout East and Southeast Asia with time and the diaspora. A celebration of the harvest moon, mooncakes are consumed exclusively during the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival in the fall, and in Taiwan, the early Chinese immigrants who brought over the tradition of the lunar pastry were forced to make do with whatever was available. “The earliest mooncakes were very simple. They would stuff them with sugar, sweet potatoes, or beans,” says Chang Tsun-Chen (張尊禎), a writer and researcher who has authored several books on traditional Taiwanese pastries. “When the economy got better, you started to see fillings like pork.” 

Today, there are dozens of glitzy mooncake styles in Taiwan—some stuffed with pineapple jam and others with taro or a salted egg yolk. This mung bean and pork rendition is perhaps the most classic and unique to the island. Designed to be relatively shelf-stable, the ground pork is sautéed until it’s quite dry, wrapped in a sweet mung bean shell, and then enclosed in a flaky, layered, lard-infused bun. The mooncakes are also meant to puff up, which is achieved by gently pressing on the pastries with the heel of your palm right before you bake them. As they cook, they’ll start to slowly expand in the oven, which is a delightful and charming feature special to this pastry.

This recipe was excerpted from 'Made in Taiwan' by Clarissa Wei, one of our top cookbooks of 2023. Buy the full book on Amazon.