Grass Jelly Panna Cotta

Grass jelly is a slightly herbal and floral, firm but still jelly like treat, that’s made from a plant called the Mesona Chinensis. It’s wildly popular in East Asia and is a favorite summer time treat where its traditionally mixed into bowls of ice cold, sweetened milk, or added as toppings on top of shaved ice. Nowadays, grass jelly is also a fan favorite topping for boba drinks as well!

Grass jelly is usually found in its canned variety at various asian grocery stores. It’s incredibly hard (at least for me) to find the fresh herbs that I can make grass jelly out of myself. I have seen some stores sell the powdered mix, where you just mix it in with some water and let set, but compared to the canned kind, I prefer the latter.

This dessert is a play off of the classic Hong Kong dessert where they essentially just combined grass jelly with some sweetened milk, shaved ice, and maybe a scoop or two of red beans. The drink is really refreshing and I remember getting it pretty often as a kid.

I wanted to do something more with the textures of that drink and decided to have that milky component almost mimic the jelly like consistency of regular grass jelly, but still have it be soft and silky smooth. So in comes the panna cotta.

Panna cotta is an Italian dessert made from sweetened milk that’s thickened with gelatin. This was the perfect compliment to the grass jelly. The sweet milk base worked as well with the grass jelly as it did in the drink form, while adding some more bite to the whole dessert.

Since panna cotta is just sweetened milk, I was looking for a way to add more flavor to it. I then thought of flavoring the milk with grass jelly itself! the recipe calls for blending up the grass jelly with the milk, until silky smooth, and then cooking that with the gelatin and letting it set. The grass jelly flavor in the panna cotta is subtle, and heightened with the extra cubes of grass jelly on top.

Grass Jelly Panna Cotta

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Prep Time: 10 minutes Cooking Time: 10 minutes 10 minutes

Nutrition facts: 200 calories 20 grams fat

Rating: 5.0/5

( 4 voted )

Ingredients

• 1 and 1/4 cup whole milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 can grass jelly
• 1 packet gelatin (7g)
• 1/4 cup cold water

Instructions

1. In a mixer, blend together 3/4 cup of cubed grass jelly (and residual liquids from the can) with 1/2 cup whole milk
2. Blend until smooth and there are no more grass jelly bits in the liquid
3. Strain the mixture into a medium sized saucepot
4. Then pour in the rest of the milk and granulated sugar
5. Cook on medium low heat until 140F, or just hot to the touch
6. As this is heating up, pour the cold water into a small bowl
7. Sprinkle the packet of gelatin over the cold water, trying to evenly spread out the gelatin over the surface of the water as much as possible
8. Once the milk has heated to 140F, pour the gelatin into the saucepot and stir until the gelatin is fully dissolved
9. Remove the saucepot from heat and pour in the heavy cream
10. Whisk to fully combine
11. Divide the mixture into 6 heat proof ramekins (or any vessel of choice), cover lightly with plastic wrap, and allow to set in the fridge for at least 6 hours or overnight
12. Remove from fridge, dice up the rest of the grass jelly into cubes and serve over the top of the panna cotta