Overview
Black grass jelly is used in drinks all over Asia, with its mild, refreshing, and herbal taste. It is used a lot for those reasons as well as its texture, perfect for Boba and refreshing Vietnamese dessert soups or drinks known as chè. Chè can have many things in them, and grass jelly is no exception.
It is a centuries-old medicinal jelly, made with Chinese mesona, which, by the way, makes a very healthy and refreshing tisane. In fact, it is fairly popular in Chinese apothecaries and even food. Black grass jelly is traditionally made with corn starch, sweet potato starch, tapioca starch, or even just rice flour.
In Southeast Asia, it has a lot of uses as a medicine, a drink topping, and they even put it in shaved ice. In Mauritius, where there is a lot of Chinese influence on their cuisine, they make something a highly Asian-influenced iced drink called "Mousse Noir", or "Black Jelly". It is even ubiquitious in Mauritius.
The indigenous people of China invented it, and it spread across China, appearing in lots of sweet soups. It also made it into Southeast Asia, where they added their local ingredients. It is also gaining attention in the West, probably because it is medicinal and there are many uses for it. It truly is a mainstay in Southeast Asia and Southern China.
Safety notes
Do not eat if it tastes really funky, but that is not the best indicator of black grass jelly being unsafe. Do not eat if the grass jelly is slimy, overly watery, or moldy.
Not medical advice — community-written information. Check a professional for anything health-related.
Recipes using this ingredient
Sources & credits
- This entry contains information adapted from the Wikipedia article on Grass Jelly, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.