Mango Pomelo Sago - The Perfect Summer Hong Kong Dessert 楊枝甘露

Mango pomelo sago is one of the most popular Cantonese desserts and it's one of my favorites. In Chinese it's called 羊枝甘露. It's a really fancy sounding name and it has nothing to do with mango or pomelo or sago. I'll explain that later. But I always thought that because it has such a fancy sounding name that it's really hard to make. But it's actually really really easy. When you go out to a dessert store you pay like seven or eight dollars per bowl. So I'm going to teach you how to make it today for about the same price where you can feed your entire family. So let's start with the sago. Here it doesn't look like much but sago expands when you cook it. So let's boil some water first. Alright let's pour in the sago. Stir immediately so it doesn't stick to the bottom and cook it till it comes back to a vigorous boil. So it's been about five minutes and you can see that it's not completely cooked through yet. So here's the trick to get the QQ which is a soft bouncy bite sago. You turn off the heat and then cover it up and let it sit for 15 to 20 minutes. Don't open it, don't peek, just let it sit and let the residual heat cook it through. You will know when a sago is ready when there's no more white on the inside. I'm gonna let this sit for a little over here while I prepare the rest of the ingredients. Now let's work on the creamy mangoey base. Let's start with some water, some sugar. Now we're gonna add in some coconut milk and it will give it this really distinct aroma. You don't need to boil this, you just need to cook it till the sugar dissolves. Sounds like it's dissolved, feels like it's dissolved, looks like it's dissolved. I guess it's dissolved. Alright so let's turn that off. Now that the sugar is dissolved, let's pour this in another container. Now we have some evaporated milk here and I think this is a very distinctively Hong Kong thing. You see that they use evaporated milk in milk teas and a lot of other desserts as well. I think maybe back then refrigeration is a problem so this is something that's easily accessible for people to use. Now this might not seem like much but we're still gonna add in the sago, we're still gonna add in the mango and the pomelo. Now put that in the fridge to chill. Now while we're waiting, let's prepare the fruits. We have some mango here, I usually split them into three. What I have here are some Mexican mangoes and you can also use Filipino mangoes and Thailand mangoes, any of those are fine, anything that's sweet. And I would score it like a grid and then you get a spoon and you scoop it out. So the reason why I have these separated into two different bowls is because one of them I'm gonna puree, which is the uglier pile, and one of them I'm going to use on top as a topping. And with the seed part, just cut off some of the skin, peel it off. Oh the seed is actually pretty small. Whatever you can't get out, I'll just eat it. Very sweet. We have a nice pomelo right here. So the way you cut it is you cut off the top. Oh it's nice and pink on the inside. And then you score it. Don't go too deep because you might get into the flesh. And then you use your fingers and you peel it. I remember in New Year's, we always have pomelo and my mom loved to use pomelo to shower. It's supposed to ward off evil. It's supposed to be like antibacterial and all that. I guess it smells nice too, so I guess it's okay. And you might ask, how do you shower pomelo? You kind of boil the skin and soak it and then use that water to wash yourself. Use the pomelo and like, you know, scrub it kind of like that. For this recipe, you need about four wedges of pomelo and then just break it apart with your So speaking of the Chinese name 羊枝甘露, it has nothing to do with pomelo, nothing to do with mango, nothing to do with sago. So I had to look up what it actually means. And so this dessert was created in the 1980s by a restaurant in Hong Kong. The meaning behind it, some of you may know Bodhisattva Guan Yin, so 觀音菩薩. So in one of her hands is a branch and that's called 羊枝 and the other hand is a vase. That's where the 羊枝 would go in. So 羊枝甘露 is like the dew of that branch. That's like, so the water inside that vase and that vase has magical powers that can bring things back to life. So 羊枝甘露 means that water. So that's a pretty lofty name. So what the creator meant was that this dessert was so refreshing and tastes so good, it will bring you back to life in a hot summer day. Too bad you can't translate this name in English. So we have our two mangoes, one mango that is for topping and one mango that is for puree. We're gonna puree it now. All right, now we bring this out again, nice and chilled already. Let's get our whiskey whiskey out. Smells so good. Mix it back into this mixture and mix it thoroughly and we have your base. You can just eat this by itself, you don't need all the other stuff. This is really good. So we're about like I think 98, 99% done. There's still like a couple that still have the white dots but it's okay, not gonna die from eating this. It's fine, it's fine. So the next step is to rinse it out in cold water so it stays in this consistency and won't cook anymore. This is the fun part. Now let's put our drained and chilled sago into our mixture. Actually look at this first. Look how beautiful this is. Each thing is like separated. Actually looks like like caviar a little bit and you know this has absolutely zero taste. It's really just for texture. All right, let's put it in. Let's give it a mix. Next we add in our pomelo. I'll keep a little bit to add on top later. This looks really good. This is all mine. Now that you put all this together, put it in the fridge for at least two hours so it can firm up and the flavors can melt together. Two hours later. Actually I lied, this is the most exciting part. Let's scoop a bit of this in. Oh it looks so good. Look at this first. How good does that look? Let's put some of this in. Indeed. Put some mango in there. Put some pomelo. Oh look at this. Tastes like mango pudding. Okay that's it. You can cut now. That's it. I'm gonna go eat. If you like this recipe, check out our other summer desserts. We have a bingsu hack where we show you how to make it without a machine and a two-ingredient cold tofu dessert recipe. So check it out right here and if you haven't subscribed yet, make sure to click that subscribe button and the notification bell so you know when we have a new video. All right, thanks for watching and I'll see you later.