Travel plans are on hold these days, but that doesn’t stop us from reminiscing about our past adventures around the world, and occupying our time with recreating our favourite dishes from abroad. One of my favourites from Thailand is mango sticky rice, which we enjoyed several times during our trip there last year.
Although it originates from Thailand, mango sticky rice is a dessert consumed throughout the Indochina region and the rest of Southeast and South Asia, including Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, India, and Bangladesh. In general, the yellow mangos used in this recipe are in season between mid-March to mid-July, so it’s just about time to try it out!
We weren’t sure if this would work out with our rice cooker, but it turned out pretty much perfectly. Here’s how we captured a taste of Thailand in our home kitchen.
Recipe
Adapted from Effortlessnessly.
Servings: 2 | Prep time: 10 minutes | Ready time: 70 minutes
Ingredients
- 2 cups glutinous rice
- 1 can (400 ml) coconut milk, unshaken
- 1 cup sugar
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 ripe yellow mango, sliced
- ½ teaspoon corn starch
Steps
1) Wash glutinous rice and soak in cold water for 30 minutes. Cook in a rice cooker on the ‘Sweet’ setting (see below for notes about our rice cooker).
Prepare coconut cream.
Open can of coconut milk without shaking it. Using a spoon, transfer the upper layer (about 1-2 inches) into a small pot or skillet. Add corn starch, salt, and 1 tablespoon sugar. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until sauce reaches a boil. Set aside.
2) In a small pot, cook remaining coconut milk with 1 cup sugar and pinch of salt on medium heat, stirring until mixture is hot but not boiling. Add to cooked rice, mixing in lightly.
3) Transfer rice onto a plate, top with coconut cream and sliced mangos. Ready to serve.
👨🍳 Notes from Mr. Chuckles
You can find glutinous rice at most Asian grocers. We found ours at the trusty T&T Supermarket.
Cooking the sticky rice can be tricky, and there is a lot of information floating around about how it should be done. We had great luck using our Zojirushi NP-HCC10 rice cooker, under the ‘Sweet’ setting.
When mixing the coconut milk and rice, you may not need to use the entire preparation of coconut milk as it may make the rice too mushy. About half the mixture was adequate for our taste.
Yellow mango is the standard for this recipe, with the Nam Doc Mai (flower nectar mango) and ok-rong varieties being most traditional. Red/orange mangoes from Mexico and the Caribbean may also be used. We went with Ataulfo mangoes, which I believe come from Mexico, as they are the easiest to source here in Toronto.
Enjoy your mango-nificent treat!
We have a Zojirushi, too! We use it all the time, but the lining of the inner bowl is beginning to flake and our model is old enough that it doesn’t have a replacement bowl available. 😦
We had lots of mango and lots of sticky rice in Laos, but never Mango Sticky Rice! I must say, though, that I recently had some frozen mango-sticky rice egg rolls from Trader Joe’s and they were DIVINE!!
I’d love to give this recipe a try but the husband is down on coconut. 😦
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Those rice egg rolls sound good!
Is the coconut issue an allergy or just a general aversion? I think sweetened condensed milk would work as well 🤔
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He’s revolted by all things coconut except, oddly, my 4-layer coconut cake!! It has coconut rum, coconut milk, and toasted coconut all over the frosting, but he loves it! Keep in mind that this is a man who claims to loathe pizza but then eats it with abandon any time I get it. I’ve stopped trying to figure him out.
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