It might sound bizarre at first, especially for westerners seeing "beans" being used in a drink, and a sweet drink too. However, popular legumes in Taiwan are usually prepared into sweet things, such as pastries, soups, or toppings for items such as shaved ice and tofu bean curd.
And this mung bean milk is especially popular during summer days, because mung beans is considered a cooling ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine. On top of that, mung bean milk is yummy too.
Mung bean milk the rice cooker way 電子鍋版綠豆沙牛奶 -
Ingredients (about 6 servings)?
- 380 grams mung beans
- 1650ml water
- 70 grams crystal sugar
- 70 grams granulated sugar
- Some milk (about 250ml per serving)
How?
Rinse and change water to wash the mung beans a few times. In the end, use some water to soak the mung beans for one hour. I simply use the inner pot for the rice cooker, since I'm going to cook the mung beans with it soon after.
Drain the soaking water then add more water again, this time it'll be the "final" water use in cooking mung beans. I used 1650ml of filtered water here.
Use the rice cooker to cook the mung beans. If you have difference cooking options for the rice cooker, select "congee" mode, otherwise "regular" mode will do. Press to cook and just let the rice cooker does the work.
Once ready, remove the inner pot. While the whole thing is still hot, add in 70 grams of crystal sugar and 70 grams of granulated sugar.
Fold in the sugar till evenly blended. The whole thing will appear a bit soupy in the end. You can change container now for easy storage. Let the mung beans cool-off first then store in the fridge overnight with a lid on.
The day after, simply add some mung beans and milk to the blender then blend till smooth. However, if you prefer to keep some mung bean bits, that's totally fine. Some people actually like to have some tiny bits of mung beans while enjoying this drink.
For my mung bean milk consistency, I used roughly the same ratio for mung beans and milk, so that's about 250 grams of mung beans and 250ml of milk per serving. You can test it out by using less milk the first time, especially you can add more milk and blend again, making it error-free that way.
The portion of ingredients I used here will give you about a medium pot-full of cooked mung beans in the end. If you can't finish them all at once, simply store the mung beans in separate containers and "freeze" them.
It is very common to store cooked mung beans in the freezer in Taiwanese household. Sometimes people even make them into ice pops too. In fact, mung bean ice pop was one of my favorite childhood snacks. Or later on you can add more liquid, such as water, milk, or soy milk, also some more sugar and turn the mung beans into mung bean soup.
Extended reading:
- Lychee and apple black tea 荔枝蘋果紅茶
- Apple and honey black tea (the blender way)
- Cucumber and pineapple juice with a touch of mint leaves
