Hawchae is a Korean style of dessert and drink perfect for hot summer weather. Fresh fruit is steeped in a mixture of strawberry milk and lemonade to create a healthy fruit salad punch that is a refreshing sweet dessert that will cool you down perfectly! It will take you 5 minutes from beginning to end. This is a pushy recipe Dear Reader!
Hwachae is a dessert drink that originated in Korea 600 years ago and has been enjoyed for centuries. The term "Hwachae" comes from the Korean words "hwa" (flower) and "chae" (tea) and it was traditionally made by soaking flower petals in water sweetened with honey. Nowadays there are a lot of types of Hwachae available (apparently up to 30 types!) and this one is Subak Hwachae made with chopped fresh watermelon. I first saw this on Tiktok and I had to try it!
I'm not naturally one to eat a lot of fruit unless it's my favourite fruit that is sweet and juicy. But this Hwachae is perfect because the soup sweetens the fruit. You can use any fruit. I used watermelon because that is one of the most popular fruit in hwachae. You can cube the watermelon or make melon balls out of it. I added blueberries and strawberries because they're both in season at the moment. You can also use some tinned fruit like lychees in it.
The watermelon that we bought for the first lot I made of hwachae wasn't very sweet at all. In fact it was terrible watermelon that didn't have much flavour at all. So I upped the amount of honey and left it to steep overnight and was happy to find that the fruit soaked up the soup and was so utterly delicious with each ball of watermelon releasing sweet syrup with every bite. The next few times that I made it, the watermelon was very sweet so we didn't have to add much honey at all. Because Mr NQN loves fruit so much he was more than happy to a) carry watermelon home b) ball it up.
Tips For Making Hwachae
Hwachae is so simple you don't really need any tips.
1 - You can cube or ball up the watermelon, it's up to you.
2 - You can serve hwachae with ice cubes in the soup to keep it chilled.
3 - I like adding a bit of honey or sweetened condensed milk to the strawberry milk and whisking it in then. This helps if your fruit isn't particularly sweet.
4 - If the watermelon isn't sweet, steep your hwachae overnight so that the watermelon absorbs the sweet soup!
5 - You can use all sorts of fruit for hwachae. Peaches, pears, oranges, grapes, apple and lychees are great in Hwachae!
6 - If you don't have strawberry milk you can add strawberry syrup to plain milk or just use plain milk. You can also use all sorts of milks for this-oat milk works well and you can change up the soda. We used a diet lemonade for this.
7 - Hwachae lasts in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 2 days.
The hardest thing is actually finding a perfectly sweet watermelon and I've got some tips for you. Ever since we started making this once a week, finding the watermelon itself has been the most challenging thing. The key is to look for an orange, creamy "field spot" on the melon (where the watermelon sits on the field). A deeper yellow or orange field spot typically indicates it has stayed on the vine longer and has more flavour and sweetness. If the field spot is white, it’s a sign that the melon isn’t fully ripe. And it honestly hasn't failed me since I learnt this.
Mr NQN's brother Manu is a bit of a watermelon whisperer (of sorts). He always brings the sweetest watermelon to parties. I asked him his secret for finding the sweetest watermelon.
Manu is a very straightforward country boy, like his brother Mr NQN. He tipped his head back and thought for a moment before answering.
"I dunno... I walk into the shop and ask them, 'Do you have any watermelons?' and then they point me in the direction of the watermelons. And I buy them," he said. He wasn't being facetious, he was simply telling us how he managed to get a sweet watermelon every time!
So tell me Dear Reader, are you good at picking watermelons? Have you ever tried Hwachae?
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