AN or ANKO is beans jam used as basic ingredient of Japanese sweet. Dark red and pulpy, its textile might be similar to chocolate paste. It was made of ADUKI beans, which are red beans mainly produced in Asian countries. We boil ADUKI beans with sugar, after that we squashed them to be beans jam. To produce Japanese sweet, beans jam is sometimes packed with buckwheat peel. It is called MANJU or bun. Sometimes, it is hardened with KANTEN or agar-agar jelly and called YOKAN. Other times boiled with MOCHI or rice cake and called SHIRUKO or ZENZAI.
Most of Japanese sweet use ANKO or ADUKI beans, but you can also use pumpkins, soybeans, sweet potatoes and other cereals to produce kinds of sweet jam instead of AUKI
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