KO EN Korean Dessert⏱ 130 minEdit history

Patbingsu (Shaved Milk Ice with Sweet Red Beans)

Name: Patbingsu (Shaved Milk Ice with Sweet Red Beans)
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 1 h 40 min
Total time: 2 h 10 min
Yield: 3 servings
Cuisine: Korean
Ingredients: 500 ml milk; 80 g condensed milk; salt; 200 g adzuki beans; 140 g sugar; 0.3 tsp salt; 100 g injeolmi (soybean-dusted rice cake); 2 tbsp roasted soybean powder; 2 tbsp condensed milk

Korea's summer dessert: finely shaved ice under whole red beans cooked sweet. Today's patbingsu shaves frozen milk and condensed milk rather than water, so the ice piles up in soft snow-like flakes instead of crunchy grains. The difference comes from the ice, not the blade: the sugar lowers the freezing point and keeps the block soft. The beans get their sugar only once they are tender, and the bowl is mixed and eaten at once.

Steps

Mix the milk, condensed milk and salt, pour into a wide shallow container 2cm deep and freeze at least 6 hours. Do it the day before.
Wash the beans, cover generously with water and bring to the boil. Boil 5 minutes and throw the water away. The astringency goes with this first water.
⏲ 5 min
Add 1.2L of fresh water and simmer 60-80 minutes, until a bean crushes easily between your fingers. Top up the water if it runs low. No sugar yet.
⏲ 70 min
Once the beans are soft, add the sugar and salt and cook 15-20 minutes, stirring, until the liquid is thick and the beans are still whole. Turn off the heat and cool completely.
⏲ 18 min
Put the bowls and spoons in the freezer for 15 minutes.
⏲ 15 min
Take the frozen milk out and leave it 5-10 minutes before shaving it in an ice shaver. Without one, scrape the surface with a fork into snow. Heap it loosely into the cold bowls without pressing.
⏲ 10 min
Pile on the beans, add the injeolmi, soybean powder and condensed milk, and serve at once. Mix it all together to eat.
⏲ 1 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Old-style bingsu: water ice shaved coarse, topped with red beans, rice cake, fruit cocktail and jelly, with condensed milk or syrup over it. The ice crunches and melts to water quickly. This is patbingsu before milk ice became usual, and it is still sold under that name.
Injeolmi patbingsu: the bowl in the photograph. Soybean powder and injeolmi add a roasted, nutty note to the sweetness of the milk ice.
Fruit or green-tea bingsu: fruit or matcha instead of beans. The ice is made the same way.
Kakigori: Japan's shaved ice, water ice shaved very thin with syrup poured over. It can be made fluffy from water ice too, but that takes a block tempered to the right point and a sharp blade taking thin shavings. At home the milk block is much the easier way to that texture.

Tips

The ice decides the texture, not the blade. Gelato describes shaved ice this way — "shaved ice deliberately makes crystals large and loose so they crunch;" — and gelato as the opposite. With water ice shaved coarse, that is right; it is what old-style bingsu was. This recipe freezes milk and condensed milk. What sugar does says gelato comes out harder with the sugar taken out, and gives the reason: "The sugar was lowering the freezing point of the water." The sugar in the condensed milk and the milk solids keep part of the water unfrozen even at freezer temperature, so the block is soft. A soft block is not chipped by the blade but shaved thin, and piles up like snow. The same machine, a different ice.
Let it stand a few minutes. A block straight from the freezer breaks rather than shaves. Five to ten minutes softens the surface enough for thin flakes. Left much longer, the melted outside clumps and comes off in lumps.
Beans first, sugar after. What sugar does says of a pot with starch in it: "A concentrated syrup holds water back from the starch and pushes up the temperature at which it can swell" Red beans are a starchy bean, and with sugar in from the start they are slow to soften in the middle. Soften them in water first and cook the sugar in afterwards.
Throw away the first water. Boiling the beans once and discarding the water takes the astringency out. Beans that skip it taste sweet but leave a furry aftertaste.
Freeze the bowl as well. Halo-halo freezes its glass for the same reason: "In a room-temperature glass the ice melts from the bottom" The same holds here: a cold bowl is what keeps ice there to the last spoonful.
Mix it before you eat. It is what halo-halo explains with its own name: "Eaten down from the top with the layers intact, the first spoonfuls are milky ice and the last are a lump of sweet things. The name is telling you this." Eaten from the top, patbingsu too starts as bare ice and ends as a heap of beans. The two desserts are the same shape: something sweet on ice, knocked down just before eating.