Sour plum recipe: Vegan Chinese plum jelly (suanmei)
A perfect dessert after a heavy meal, or on a hot summer' day!
Servings: 8 people
Equipment
- Pot
- Heat-resistant whisk
- sieve
- Silicone molds and cookie cutters Optional
Ingredients
To make the Asian plum tea
- 1.4 oz Black Chinese preserved plum (wumei) (40g) This was about 3 plums for me- there's no need to worry about cutting the plums to get the exact weight- just round up!
- 1.4 oz Dried Chinese hawthorn, briefly rinsed (40g) Add more of this if you want a tarter drink
- 4 C water (1 litre)
- Other optional ingredients: Chinese licorice (gan cao), Chinese dried tangerine peel (chen pi- can substitute with orange peel, making sure no white pith remains), hibiscus tea, osmanthus tea, roselle tea etc Always check with your doctor before using Traditional Chinese Medicine ingredients, if you're not sure whether you can take them or pregnant. Orange peel can make the drink bitter if not used correctly, so add towards the end of boiling.
To make the jelly
- Gelling agent: either konnyaku powder or agar agar powder For the konnyaku powder, agar agar flakes and agar agar strips, check the packaging to see how much should be used for 1 litre of liquid (For agar agar powder, it would be about 11-13g as the liquid is tart- the acidity of the liquid changes the amount of agar agar required)
- 1.4 oz White Granulated sugar, add to the konnyaku or agar agar powder and mix very well (40g) Substitute: osmanthus sugar (check the notes for a recipe) or rock sugar
Instructions
To make the Asian plum tea
- Add the ingredients to the pot, bring to the boil then lower to simmer for 1hour.
- After 1 hour of simmering, the ingredients will be soggy but still edible. Strain them out and use them for jam or eat them as they are. Make sure to get all the juice out of them when straining!
- Weigh out the remaining liquid - it should be close to 1 litre if you've strained out most of the juice. If it's less than 1 litre, don't add more water as it'll dilute the taste! Simply adjust the amount of gelling agent accordingly.
To make the jelly with konjac powder- Use HOT plum tea
- Return the pot (with the sour plum tea) to the fire, and when almost boiling, add the konjac-sugar mixture slowly, whisking continuously as you don't want lumps to form. If they do, the jelly will still be edible but it'll be unpleasantly thick in places
- Stir till the bubbles are gone, then switch off the fire, pour the jelly into molds and allow to cool for at least 3h in the fridge.
To make the jelly with agar agar powder- Use COOLED plum tea
- Allow the liquid to fully cool before adding the agar agar powder, stirring non-stop to prevent clumping. Check your packet for the recommended quantity of powder to add but it will be about 11-13g for 1 litre as the tea is on the acidic side. (Note: if the clumps are too unsightly, you can always remelt the agar agar!)
- Allow to boil for 5 minutes, then pour into the molds and allow to cool for at least 3h in the fridge.
Storage
- Once cooled, store in air-tight containers, preferably in the fridge and finish within 5-7 days
Notes
Click here for an easy osmanthus sugar recipe
I highly recommend adding osmanthus flower tea leaves if you can get them, as they round up the flavours very well.
Note: don't use old suanmei tang to make this as the drink goes bad within 2-3 days
Remember to chew carefully when eating konnyaku jelly as it's a choking hazard!