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Thai Coconut Sticky Rice and Mango ข้าวเหนียวมะม่วง

By on March 20, 2009 in She Deglutenizes, She Thais, She Veges


At a risk of causing some raised eyebrows, I am going to say this: if you can produce excellent sweet coconut sticky rice and pair it with a perfectly ripe mango of exceptional quality, the kingdom of heaven is at hand; but if you’re going to fail — even just a little — on one component, may it be the sticky rice.

In fact, the coconut sticky rice is made to complement the mango, not the other way around. The rest of the year, this sweet coconut sticky rice is routinely made as a foil for different kinds of sweet and half-sweet-half-savory toppings. However, during the months of April through June when mangoes are at their best in Thailand, the same coconut sticky rice, which usually borders on being taken for granted, all of a sudden shows up all over town with big smiles that cannot be wiped off its sticky face now that it’s paired with mangoes at their peak.

It takes some practice to get the sticky rice part right, but when you pair it with the best mango, any shortcomings easily fade away. Tart, unripe, fibrous, tasteless mango, on the other hand, can ruin even the best quality coconut sticky rice.

 

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Thai Coconut Sticky Rice and Mango ข้าวเหนียวมะม่วง
 
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Recipe type: Dessert, Vegetarian, Vegan
Serves: 2
Ingredients
  • ½ cup raw Thai sticky rice (no substitute), soaked anywhere from one to 5 hours, drained, and rinsed to get rid of excess starch
  • ½ cup good coconut milk
  • ½ cup sugar
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • One perfectly ripe good mango (preferably Ataulfo), peeled and cut into thick slices
Instructions
  1. Put the rice in a heatproof bowl and steam in a steamer, over medium heat, for about 20 minutes (based on one half cup of rice). The rice should be cooked through with no hard, raw bits in the middle of the grains. You can also cook the sticky rice without a steamer, using the splatter guard method.
  2. Turn off the heat and let the rice stay in the steamer, with the lid on, while you prepare the coconut milk.
  3. In a heatproof bowl, heat the coconut milk, sugar, and salt in the microwave on high for 2 minutes. The sugar should completely dissolve and the mixture should be very hot.
  4. Take the sticky rice out of the steamer. Pour the hot coconut mixture on top of the rice and gently stir. (It may look like your rice is drowned in coconut water, but the liquid will all be absorbed.) Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let the mixture stand at room temperature, undisturbed, for half an hour.
  5. The coconut sticky rice is to be served at room temperature along with fresh mango. The sesame seeds are optional.
  6. The rice can be refrigerated and reheated in the microwave, but the texture of reheated sticky rice isn’t as good as it is when freshly made. Freezing sticky rice is not recommended.
Notes
As you can see, my favorite ratio for sweet coconut sticky rice is very easy to remember - 1 part raw sticky rice, 1 part coconut milk, 1 part sugar, and one pinch of salt for every half cup of sticky rice. This recipe is for two servings. If you make this for a larger crowd, adjust accordingly. Traditionally, coconut sticky rice is topped with a dollop of coconut cream that has been slightly thickened with rice flour. The topping is made to be a little bit on the salty side in order to bring out the sweetness of the rice. To eliminate one extra step of making the topping, I've made my sweet sticky rice as if it has the topping already mixed in. The texture of the end product is a little softer and wetter than what you would find on the streets of Bangkok, though not nearly as moist as rice pudding.
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Added June 26th, 2011: I made a batch of the sweet coconut sticky rice with palm sugar several days ago, because I ran out of white sugar. This is not what is normally done in Thailand, and I’d never done it this way before. You need to increase the amount of the sugar a little as palm sugar is not as sweet as white sugar (replace 1/2 cup white sugar in the recipe with 3/4 cup (packed) shaved palm sugar), and eventually — as you can see in the image above — you end up with beige-colored sweet sticky rice which some may consider not as appetizing. But, oh, my goodness, is this good.

sticky rice and mango Added April 16th, 2012: This is a more streamlined, quicker, done-on-the-stovetop clone of Thai sticky rice and mango. Jasmine rice is used in place of the usual sticky rice and cooked in a pot, creating a result that bears more resemblance to western-style rice pudding than the classic Thai dessert. The flavor is the same, though. Pandan creates a more dramatic color contrast and provides the familiar scent of Southeast Asian treats, but you don’t need it. Visit my weekly column on Serious Eats for the recipe: Thai-Inspired Coconut-Pandan Rice Pudding and Mango.

Related Posts:
Just What Is Thai Sticky Rice?
Chaokoh: My Favorite Brand of Coconut Milk
Choose the Right Mangoes for Your Thai Mango Coconut Sticky Rice
How to Peel and Slice a Ripe Mango

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What Kind of Rice Is Thai Sticky Rice?

By on March 19, 2009 in She Deglutenizes, She Rants and Muses, She Stocks a Thai Pantry, She Thais, She Veges

thai sticky rice
Now that I have cleared up a few things on how to choose mangoes, how to peel and slice mangoes, and quality canned coconut milk, I’m moving on to the last item before getting to the recipe for Thai Sweet Coconut Sticky Rice and Mango. While most Southeast Asians take the terms for granted, those who did not grow up eating this long grain glutinous rice often find themselves confused about just what kind of rice it is. What does it mean — sticky? An attempt to call it “glutinous rice” doesn’t help all that much. You don’t solve a problem by giving it another name.

The thing is, any short grain rice is considered sticky in comparison to its long grain counterparts. This is due to the difference in starch contents which vary from one type of rice to another. Higher starch content = stickiness. (Even within the same type of rice you see a difference in starch content. In general, a new crop is more starchy than an old crop.) Sushi rice is often called sticky rice. The types of rice used in Korean cuisine are also referred to as sticky rice. If you’re confused, your confusion is completely justified.

Though several types of short grain rice are lumped together into the “sticky” category, only one kind of rice is used to make steamed sticky rice common in the Thai and Laotian cultures. Wiki has a pretty good article that spells it all out for you; go straight to the section on Thai-Laotian tradition, if you’re short on time.

In terms of helping you to pick out the right type of rice, I could tell you that this type of rice is opaque and not translucent like regular long grain rice. But that’s not to help much, because all short grain rice, even the types that cannot and should not be used in place of Thai sticky rice, is opaque. Brand names also vary and may not always be written in Engligh.

The best thing is to commit to memory the circled portion in the picture below. If you can read Thai, good for you. If you can’t, think of it as a single-unit logogram — an image of the lexical kind.

(Added August 9th, 2013: 3 Horses is the brand I recommend and one of the easiest to find. It looks like this. Keep the picture on your phone as a reference.)


Here’s your sticky rice in four languages, namely English, Chinese, Laotian, Vietnamese, Thai (in that order), and, as a bonus, one unintelligible language found just above the net weight.


[Note: Do not let the “scented” part confuse you. The rice doesn’t have any artificial “scent” added. This is different from the “scented” versus “unscented” designation you find on deodorant or toilet paper packages. In this case, they’re just telling you that the rice is the superior kind of sticky rice that is naturally fragrant.]

There are a few sub-categories within the same type of Thai sticky rice. All of them work just fine. As long as the package bears the name ข้าวเหนียว and the grains look opaque white, you’re on the right track.

Related Posts:
The Easiest Way to Make Perfectly-Steamed Sticky Rice
Thai Mango and Sweet Coconut Sticky Rice

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How to Choose the Right Mango for Thai Mango and Coconut Sticky Rice

By on March 16, 2009 in She Deglutenizes, She Steams, She Stocks a Thai Pantry, She Thais, She Veges

mango for Thai sweet sticky rice recipe
Southeast and South Asian people are usually gentle and polite — sometimes to the point of being shy and withdrawn — in social situations. But if you put them all together in one place and one happens to make a bad move of claiming the types of mango (banana, coconut, etc.) found in his/her country are superior to those found in the rest of the region, things could get awkward at best and ugly at worst. So even if I do think Thai mangoes are the best, I rarely say that out loud.

Okay, I’m going to remain ducking under the table until you Malaysian, Indonesian, Indian, Filipino readers put away your broomsticks.

This time of year, those in Thailand are starting to see more and more mangoes in the market and I’m here in Chicago totally depressed. The beginning of the mango season in Thailand can only be described as magnificent in the most literal meaning of its Latin etymology. At least, there was excitement to that degree in our family. We love mangoes and durians, as do most other Thai families. The fact that the mango season is closely followed by the durian season only increases the joy ten-folds. It’s like nature’s way of apologizing for turning on the heat and humidity full blast during the months of April and May.

[As a side comment, though I can see why durian is referred to as the king of fruits, whoever took the liberty of crowning mangosteen the queen of fruits has some explaining to do. I just don’t understand why the much, much more delicious mango doesn’t make it into the royal fruity palace.]

In the backyard of the house in which I grew up there were at least five different kinds of mango trees. They started budding and blooming in the colder months of December through mid-February. Then the withered flowers gave way to baby mangoes the size of the tip of your pinkie. At a risk of sounding like a kid who didn’t have a life, one of my favorite things to do was checking on the growth of the mangoes every morning before I left for school. By the time April rolled around, these wee mangoes would have grown into full-sized mangoes, ready for harvest.

My grandmother would snap full-grown, yet green, mangoes right off the branches, one by one, with a bamboo basket attached to the tip of a long pole. For the ones meant to be consumed when green, we would eat them right away. For those meant to be eaten when fully ripe, we would let them ripen, undisturbed, in the basement.

The Thai people are very picky when it comes to mango. (I have previously stepped on some international toes by expressing my shamelessly-bigoted opinion in my post on mango-lime jam). Thailand might be a country that seems to get a new prime minister and cabinet every Tuesday afternoon as we take our time deciding just what kind of democracy we dig the most, but certain things remain static.

Mango rules are one example of things that never change. Though these rules are not written, they’re instinctively followed. Certain types of mango are made to be eaten when they’re green; certain types are made to be eaten when they’re ripe. Certain types of green mango are to be served in paper-thin slices; certain types are to be cut into long spears. Certain types of mango are used exclusively to make mango-based chutneys, relishes, or dipping sauces. We’re a bunch of neurotic mango sticklers, I guess.

The mango rules kick in big time when it comes to choosing the right types of mango to pair with sweet coconut sticky rice. As far as I know, only two types of mangoes are principally used for this very purpose: Ok-Rong and Nam-Dokmai.

Though pairing other types of mango with the coconut sticky rice probably would not result in one being murdered and buried in an unmarked grave, it would most definitely result in the perpetrator being stared down by a mob of miffed Thais. Respectable Thai restaurants in the US always pull this dessert off the menu when good mangoes are out of season. That tells you something.


The closest thing to the aforementioned Ok-Rong and Nam-Dokmai is Manila or Ataulfo mangoes (shown here) which are widely available in the US. They’re light green when green (oh, so helpful …) and dark yellow with a tint of orange when ripe. In stark contrast to the disgusting greenish-reddish mangoes that are available all year round in the US, Ataulfo mangoes have all the characteristics of good eating mangoes: meaty, non-fibrous, fragrant, and very sweet. If you see this type of mango at your local grocery store, by all means, buy them by the case.

The mangoes shown here present an example of what ripe mangoes look like. However, personally, I would let them sit on the kitchen counter for 2-3 more days until the taut skin turns a bit wrinkly. That is when I know they are perfectly ripe and sweet with no trace of tartness left. Only then will they be good enough to pair with the sweet coconut sticky rice. Biting into a piece of tart mango and sweet sticky rice is one of the biggest food bummers of all time, in my opinion.

There are many kinds of mango in the market, but only few are suitable mates for your coconut sticky rice. So, to quote the Grail Knight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, choose wisely.

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