Thai Mango and Sticky Rice with Coconut Milk (Khao Neaw Mamuang)
A sweet snack that combines the richness of sticky rice, the sweetness of ripe mangoes and the creaminess of coconut milk.I use coconut milk twice in my Thai mango and sticky rice. I add it to the rice after cooking. Then, I drizzle more after the sweet mangoes and creamy rice are on the plate.
Ingredients
- 1 cup sticky (glutinous) rice rinsed several times and soaked in water for at least four hours, then drained
- 3 generous pinches salt
- 1 pandan leaf optional but recommended
- 2 cups thick coconut milk (see notes after the recipe), divided
- ½ cup white sugar
- 4 ripe mangoes
- toasted sesame seeds
Instructions
- Dump the drained sticky rice into the rice cooker, add a pinch of salt and the pandan leaf then pour in a cup of water. Cook until the water has been absorbed.
- Fluff up the rice with a fork.
- Pour a cup of coconut milk over the rice and gently stir in. Cover the rice for another 10 minutes (no, there is no need to turn on the cooker again; just set to WARM) then fluff up the rice again.
- Spread the cooked rice in a shallow bowl to cool.
- Pour the remaining coconut milk into a small sauce pan, add the sugar and the remaining salt. Heat, stirring, just until the sugar and salt are dissolved. Set aside to cool.
- Cut both sides of each mango close to the stone at the center. Discard the stones.
- Cut the mango halves into slices about a quarter of an inch thick. You can scoop out the mango flesh to separate it from the skin before slicing or you can slice first and scoop out the slices afterwards.
- Place a scoop of sticky rice at the center of four plates.
- Surround the rice with mango slices.
- Divide the remaining sweetened coconut milk into four portions and pour one portion around the mangoes on each plate.
- Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve.
Notes
Thick coconut milk is not pure coconut cream. What was used here was the first extraction from grated mature coconuts but with a little water added. Normally, you don’t add water to the coconut before squeezing to get pure coconut cream. But that would have been too thick for my purposes so I added a cup of warm water to four cups of grated coconut.
If you’re using powdered coconut cream, add just enough water to make a thick but still pourable milk.
If using canned, choose coconut cream instead of coconut milk. Unless you put it in the fridge, the content should be pourable.
In Thailand, there is a special shallow basket in which the rice is steamed so that the grains never touch the water directly. It’s not a tool that we could use everyday so we never thought of buying one. But, no matter, a rice cooker works fine.
Updated from a recipe originally published in march 11, 2010
