[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":412},["ShallowReactive",2],{"recipe:che-ba-mau":3,"recipe:country:vietnam":189},{"slug":4,"title":5,"nativeName":6,"romanized":7,"pronunciation":8,"countrySlug":9,"region":10,"emoji":11,"summary":12,"intro":13,"story":14,"whyThis":15,"tips":20,"substitutions":27,"variations":40,"serveWith":50,"storage":52,"faq":53,"equipment":69,"baseServings":74,"prepMinutes":75,"cookMinutes":76,"restMinutes":77,"difficulty":78,"course":79,"diet":82,"mainIngredients":88,"ingredients":91,"instructions":141,"nutrition":168,"images":175,"keywords":179,"publishedAt":187,"updatedAt":187,"authorSlug":188},"che-ba-mau","Chè Ba Màu (Vietnamese Three-Color Bean Dessert)","Chè ba màu","Che ba mau","cheh bah MOW","vietnam","Southern Vietnam","🍧","Saigon's three-color dessert in a glass: mung bean paste, sweet red beans and green pandan jelly under crushed ice and salted coconut cream, built to be stirred into one cold, chewy mess.","Chè ba màu is a tall glass of three sweet layers — soft yellow mung bean paste, whole red beans in their syrup, and strips of green pandan jelly — buried under crushed ice and flooded with coconut cream. It is a dessert you drink as much as eat, with a long spoon, and the first thing you do is destroy the layers by stirring everything together. What you get is cold and only moderately sweet, with a salted-coconut richness running through it and three different textures fighting for attention: grainy, whole, and bouncy. In Southern Vietnam it is afternoon food, made for heat, and nothing about it needs an oven.","Chè is not one dessert but an entire Vietnamese category, running to hundreds of named varieties: hot and cold, thick and soupy, made from beans, rice, tapioca, corn, lotus seed, banana, taro, and just about anything else that can be sweetened. Some are eaten warm from a bowl on a cold Hanoi evening; others are iced and served in glasses. Chè ba màu — literally three colors — belongs firmly to the southern, iced half of the family, where the tropical climate and the abundance of coconut pushed the whole genre toward cold, creamy and layered.\n\nIt is also a dessert that exists to be looked at first. The layers are built deliberately in a clear glass so the yellow, red and green sit in distinct bands, which is why it is nearly always sold in glass rather than plastic bowls, and why every street cart lines finished glasses along the counter as its own advertising. Then the customer stirs it all into a muddy beige and drinks it. The presentation is genuinely temporary and everyone involved knows it.\n\nIt shares a family tree with the other great Southeast Asian iced bean desserts — Malaysian and Singaporean cendol and ais kacang, Indonesian es campur, Filipino halo-halo. All of them combine sweetened legumes, jelly or starch noodles, shaved ice and coconut or evaporated milk, and the resemblances are close enough that the versions clearly influenced one another across the region rather than developing in isolation. Chè ba màu's particular signature is the pairing of a smooth mung bean layer with whole red beans, and the salt in the coconut cream, which Vietnamese cooks add deliberately so the sweetness has an edge to push against. Outside Vietnam it became one of the standard offerings of diaspora cafés, usually listed on English menus simply as three-color dessert.",[16,17,18,19],"Salts the coconut cream and thickens it slightly, which is the difference between a dessert that tastes balanced and one that tastes like sugar water.","Cooks the two beans separately with different sugar levels, because a smooth paste and whole beans in syrup are doing different jobs in the glass.","Gives a pandan jelly that actually holds its shape against crushed ice instead of dissolving into the coconut within a minute.","Includes the tinned-bean shortcut in full, since half the cooking time here is just soaking and simmering.",[21,22,23,24,25,26],"Soak both types of bean overnight in plenty of cold water. Unsoaked beans take twice as long and cook unevenly, leaving hard centers in the middle of a soft batch.","Salt the coconut cream — a good half teaspoon for 300 ml. Without it the whole glass tastes flat and cloyingly sweet, and this is the correction most home versions miss.","Add sugar to the red beans only after they are fully tender. Sugar added early firms the skins and they will never soften properly afterward.","Crush the ice rather than using cubes. Big cubes leave gaps, chill the mixture unevenly and make the glass impossible to stir.","Chill everything separately and assemble at the last minute. A pre-built glass sitting in the fridge turns into a watery brown slush within twenty minutes.","If you want cleaner layers, tilt the glass and spoon each one gently down the side rather than dropping it in from above.",[28,32,36],{"original":29,"swap":30,"note":31},"Dried mung beans and red beans","A tin of cooked adzuki or red kidney beans, drained, and a tin of sweetened mung bean paste","Entirely acceptable and very common. Rinse tinned beans well, then warm them for five minutes in a light sugar syrup so they carry some sweetness of their own.",{"original":33,"swap":34,"note":35},"Fresh pandan leaves","1 tsp pandan extract, or leave the jelly plain and colorless","Bottled pandan extract is much stronger than the leaves and usually dyed, so start with less than you think. A plain jelly still contributes the bounce, which is most of what that layer is for.",{"original":37,"swap":38,"note":39},"Agar-agar powder","Gelatine, using about double the weight","Agar sets firm and stays firm against ice, which is why it is the traditional choice. Gelatine sets softer and starts to melt in the glass, so the jelly disappears faster.",[41,44,47],{"name":42,"description":43},"Chè đậu trắng","Black-eyed peas cooked with sticky rice and coconut cream, served warm rather than iced. Thicker, more porridge than drink, and popular in the south as an evening chè.",{"name":45,"description":46},"Chè thái","The Thai-influenced version: jackfruit, longan, lychee and red rambutan jelly in coconut and condensed milk instead of beans. Sweeter, fruitier, no cooking involved.",{"name":48,"description":49},"Chè bắp","Sweet corn simmered with tapioca pearls into a thick, milky chè, served warm or cold with a spoon of coconut cream. Made from the whole cob, including the stripped core for flavor.",[51],"Eaten on its own with a long spoon, usually mid-afternoon. Vietnamese iced tea alongside is common; the two are often sold from the same cart.","Assembled chè ba màu does not keep at all — the ice melts, the layers merge and the coconut cream thins out within half an hour. The components, however, keep well and are worth making ahead. The mung bean paste and the sweetened red beans will hold for 4 days in sealed containers in the fridge; the pandan jelly keeps for 3 days but should be kept in one slab and cut just before serving, since cut pieces weep. The coconut cream lasts 3 days and will thicken and separate in the cold, so warm it briefly and whisk it smooth before using. None of it freezes usefully: the beans turn mealy and the jelly collapses into water on thawing.",[54,57,60,63,66],{"question":55,"answer":56},"What are the three colors in chè ba màu?","Yellow from steamed mung bean paste, red from sweetened red or adzuki beans, and green from pandan jelly. Some versions swap the green jelly for green mung bean or use red jelly instead of red beans, but yellow, red and green is the standard set and it is the reason the dessert is served in a clear glass.",{"question":58,"answer":59},"Do I have to stir it before eating?","Yes, that is how it is meant to be eaten. The layers are for presentation and are stirred together the moment the glass reaches the table, so every spoonful has bean, jelly, ice and coconut in it. Eating it layer by layer means the first half is dry paste and the last half is watery coconut.",{"question":61,"answer":62},"Can I use tinned beans instead of cooking from dried?","Absolutely, and it cuts the recipe to about twenty minutes of work. Use drained tinned adzuki or red kidney beans, rinsed well, then simmered for five minutes in a syrup of equal parts sugar and water so they pick up sweetness. Tinned sweetened mung bean paste is also sold at Vietnamese grocers and needs nothing done to it.",{"question":64,"answer":65},"Why is there salt in the coconut cream?","Because the dessert would be flat without it. Vietnamese cooks salt the coconut topping deliberately — it sharpens the sweetness of the beans instead of adding to it, and it brings out the coconut flavor itself. Half a teaspoon in 300 ml is roughly right, and you should be able to notice it if you taste the cream alone.",{"question":67,"answer":68},"Is chè ba màu a drink or a dessert?","Both, in practice. It is served in a tall glass with a long spoon and often a fat straw, and once stirred it is loose enough to drink. Vietnamese sellers treat it as a chè, which is its own category of sweet things that sits somewhere between a pudding, a soup and a beverage.",[70,71,72,73],"Two saucepans","Small square tin or container for setting the jelly","Blender or potato masher","Four tall clear glasses and long spoons",4,25,55,120,"easy",[80,81],"dessert","drink",[83,84,85,86,87],"vegetarian","vegan","gluten-free","dairy-free","nut-free",[89,90],"coconut-milk","cornstarch",[92,96,99,103,106,108,113,115,116,120,124,127,131,133,137],{"qty":77,"unit":93,"name":94,"group":95},"g","dried split mung beans, soaked overnight","Yellow layer",{"qty":97,"unit":93,"name":98,"group":95},40,"sugar",{"qty":100,"unit":101,"name":102,"group":95},1,"pinch","fine salt",{"qty":77,"unit":93,"name":104,"group":105},"dried red or adzuki beans, soaked overnight","Red layer",{"qty":107,"unit":93,"name":98,"group":105},70,{"qty":109,"unit":110,"name":111,"group":112},400,"ml","water","Green layer",{"qty":74,"unit":93,"name":114,"group":112},"agar-agar powder",{"qty":97,"unit":93,"name":98,"group":112},{"qty":74,"unit":117,"name":118,"note":119,"group":112},"piece","pandan leaves, knotted","or 1 tsp pandan extract",{"ref":89,"qty":121,"unit":110,"name":122,"group":123},300,"full-fat coconut milk","Coconut cream",{"qty":125,"unit":126,"name":98,"group":123},2,"tbsp",{"qty":128,"unit":129,"name":130,"group":123},0.5,"tsp","fine sea salt",{"ref":90,"qty":100,"unit":129,"name":132,"group":123},"cornstarch, slaked in 1 tbsp cold water",{"qty":134,"unit":93,"name":135,"group":136},800,"ice, crushed","To serve",{"ref":138,"qty":125,"unit":126,"name":139,"optional":140,"group":136},"condensed-milk","sweetened condensed milk",true,[142,146,151,155,158,162,165],{"title":143,"text":144,"timerSeconds":145},"Cook the mung bean layer","Drain the soaked mung beans and simmer them in fresh water to cover by 2 cm for about 20 minutes, until they collapse when pressed against the side of the pan. Drain off any remaining water, stir in the 40 g of sugar and a pinch of salt, and mash to a thick, spoonable paste that holds a shape but is not stiff. Cool completely.",1200,{"title":147,"text":148,"timerSeconds":149,"tip":150},"Cook the red beans","Drain the soaked red beans, cover with fresh water by 4 cm and simmer for 40 to 50 minutes, topping up as needed, until a bean squashes easily between finger and thumb with no chalky center. Only then stir in the 70 g of sugar and cook 5 minutes more, until the liquid has reduced to a loose syrup that coats the beans.",2700,"Adding sugar before the beans are tender toughens the skins permanently. Wait for the squash test.",{"title":152,"text":153,"tip":154},"Set the pandan jelly","Bring the 400 ml of water to a boil with the knotted pandan leaves, simmer 5 minutes, then fish out the leaves. Whisk in the agar powder and 40 g of sugar and boil hard for 2 minutes, whisking, or the agar will not activate. Pour into a shallow tin to a depth of about 1.5 cm and leave at room temperature for 30 minutes until firmly set.","Agar has to reach a rolling boil. A gentle simmer gives you a puddle that never sets.",{"title":156,"text":157},"Make the salted coconut cream","Warm the coconut milk with the 2 tablespoons of sugar and the salt over low heat until it steams but does not boil. Stir in the slaked cornstarch and cook a further minute, until it just thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Cool, then chill — it should taste noticeably salty on its own.",{"title":159,"text":160,"timerSeconds":161},"Chill and cut","Refrigerate the mung bean paste, red beans, jelly and coconut cream for at least 2 hours until thoroughly cold. Turn the set jelly out and cut it into thin strips about 5 mm wide and 4 cm long, like short green noodles.",7200,{"title":163,"text":164},"Build the glasses","Into each of four tall glasses spoon a layer of mung bean paste, then the red beans with a little of their syrup, then a tangle of pandan jelly, tilting the glass and easing each layer down the side so the bands stay distinct.",{"title":166,"text":167},"Ice, pour and stir","Pack crushed ice over the top to the rim and pour over the cold salted coconut cream, adding a drizzle of condensed milk if you want it richer. Serve immediately with long spoons and tell everyone to stir it into one color before the first mouthful.",{"calories":169,"protein":170,"carbs":171,"fat":172,"fiber":173,"sugar":174,"estimated":140},390,9,62,13,8,38,[176],{"src":177,"alt":178},"\u002Fimages\u002Frecipes\u002Fche-ba-mau\u002Fhero.svg","Tall glass of Vietnamese three-color dessert with yellow mung bean, red beans, green pandan jelly and coconut cream over ice",[180,181,182,183,184,185,186],"che ba mau","vietnamese dessert","three color dessert","mung bean","pandan jelly","coconut cream","iced 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