Try Bingsu (Korean Shaved Ice) this summer!

Bingsu (빙수), Korean shaved ice dessert, Korean ice sorbet, snow cones with toppings.. whatever you want to call it, it is sooo fabulously cooling and refreshing! When I was little, there was only one kind of Bingsu – Patbingsu(팥빙수). But now there are so many different kinds of Bingsu and the variety has kind of exploded: with different kinds of fruits (called Kwail Bingsu 과일빙수), with green tea powder (Nokcha Bingsu 녹차빙수), with mango, with coffee, with chocolate cookies, with artificial flavorings and so on. Original Patbingsu (redbean shaved ice) was made with sweet red beans (danpat 단팥) which is probably the most important ingredient to a classic Korean Bingsu besides the ice. And after that misugaru (미수가루 roasted multi grain powder) and sweetened condensed milk is probably the next two.

If you want a cooling snack or dessert for the hot summer days and also for the upcoming July 4th weekend, you may want to try making some Bingsu or Korean shaved ice dessert at home! Bingsu can be made in so many different ways with different toppings and your kids or the kid in you can have so much fun making it. Just remember to have some kind of syrup to tie it all together and some misugaru or almond slivers to add a flavor of nuttiness.

Before we get to how to make the best ice cold Bingsu ever, let me first tell you about my all time favorite Bingsu. For that, we need to go back to my college days in the summer. In Korea, all students from elementary to college attend school right into the middle of summer because schools only start summer vacation in late July. Overall, Korean kids only have about 1 month of summer vacation. Their winter vacation is much longer though, from late December till end of Feburary or so.

Now, it gets really HOT and MUGGY in Korea in the summer and so my friends and I wanted to eat cooling foods all the time. So we probably visited Gami Bunsik (가미분식) at least 2-3 times a week for lunch at summer time to cool our insides with their famous Cold Noodle Soup (Naengmyeon 냉면). This naengmyeon is so addictive that my friends always wondered if they had put oh, you know.. somethin’ somethin’ in there to get us totally hooked. ? Well, you just never know! HAHA!

Anyway, besides the famously addictive Naengmyeon, there is another dish that is equally as addictive. It is their Subak Bingsu (수박빙수). Unlike the common bingsu, they are no sweet red beans and no misugaru. But, believe me, it is so awesomely cool and refreshing that you feel totally cooled down after a bowl of that super ice cold goodness. I miss it so much now…sigh…

Right, so in this post, I will first show you how to make the classic traditional Bingsu with red beans and berries. And then I will introduce Subak Bingsu in another post. It is actually too simple but it’s quite irresistible.

To make Korean shaved ice or Bingsu, either a ice shaver machine like the one below or a snow cone machine works best. I think you could also try using your blender if you have a blender that crushes ice and can make smoothies. I bought this one few days ago for just $12 at Mitsuwa, a Japanese grocery store. You freeze the ice in the round container and once it’s frozen, you take out the ice and put the round block of ice into the machine. Then you screw the top on and hand crank/shave the ice. Unless you are serving a HUGE amount of people, this low cheap tech machine will work great with just a bit of elbow grease. ?

Note on ingredients

• Misugaru (미숫가루) is a powder made from several roasted grains. Usually sweet rice, brown rice, barley, soy beans, sorghum, black beans and Job’s tears are roasted and made into powder. Besides adding it to Bingsu, Koreans love to make cold misugaru drink by mixing the powder, honey and ice water. Imagine the sweet nutty goodness of peanut butter without the fat. It’s a great multi-grain drink for kids and adults alike. You can buy it here at my store if you don’t have a store nearby.
• Bingsu tteok(빙수떡) is also called Mini mochi rice cake in the US. These are little sweet rice cakes that adds great chewy texture. You may have seen these at frozen yogurt shops like Pinkberry, Yogurtland, etc.

Ingredients for Bingsu – Misugaru (roasted grain powder), sweet red beans, sweet condensed milk, bingsu tteok

Bingsu – Korean shaved ice with berries

Servings 2 Time: 8 min Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

• ice shaver machine and ice (Note 1 serving = 2 cup in volume of shaved ice)
• 1/2 cup sweet red beans or adzuki beans (1/4 cup per serving)
• 2 Tbs sweetened condensed milk (1 Tbs per serving)
• 2 Tbs misugaru (미수가루) or roasted grains powder (1 Tbs per serving)
• 2~3 Tbs bingsu tteok or mini mochi rice cake (1.5 Tbs or 1 heaping Tbs per serving)
• 6 strawberries, sliced
• 1/2 cup blueberries (1/4 cup per serving)

1. If using a special round container for the ice, fill with water and put in the freezer to make ice. Some machines, like mine above, will let you make shaved ice from regular ice cubes also. This is nice to have since you may not always have the special ice ready or have enough of it.
2. Open cans, package and clean berries and prepare each of the toppings for assembly.
3. Slice strawberries.
4. Shave the ice into a bowl large enough to hold everything.
   

   

5. Order of toppings is not terribly important but to coat ice evenly, you may want to sprinkle the misugaru on ice using a small sieve.
   

   

6. Add berries and tteok/mini mochi rice cake. Spoon sweet red beans on top or on the side and then drizzle sweetened condensed milk. Don’t you feel cool just looking at it??
   

   

Tips

You can substitute injeolmi tteok instead of the mini mochi cake. But you will need to slice the injeolmi into small cubes. Whatever fruits you use, you should either chop into smaller cubes or slice it thin because you don’t want to be trying to cut big chunks of fruit while the ice is melting!

Enjoy and Happy July 4th!!

XOXO

JinJoo