Guizhou Rice Shake (安顺冰浆)
A refreshing rice shake that's made using mostly fruit, sticky rice, and ice, giving you a creamy yet light texture.
This is Bingjiang (冰浆) – it's a smoothie-like snack from the Guizhou province that uses a base of blended cooked rice. It was originally concocted as a street snack in the town of Anshun in the mid 90s, and from there it spread around the province and today bingjiang shops can be seen all around the capital city of Guiyang. It's refreshing, surprisingly light and not too sweet, fantastic to top off a fiery Guizhou meal or street food crawl.
But you may wonder if this 'blended rice shake'… just a Guizhou horchata?" Well, the answer is no… there are two core differences between a horchata and a bingjiang… besides that bingjiang's obviously blended with ice like a smoothie, there's also the fact that bingjiang uses cooked sticky rice, as the base instead. The end result of this route is sort of a subtle periodic boba like chew that can be fantastically fun addition to the shake.
The best part about the sticky rice in Bingjiang is that it gives the thing a satisfying body, without the need of a ton of cream, milk, sugar, or banana as a filler, leaving you more room to enjoy more food alongside.
Two Bingjiang Recipes
PREPARING THE STICKY RICE:
Sticky rice (糯米), preferrably long grain, 100g
Process：
If your rice cooker has a sticky rice function, feel free to use that.
Alternatively, soak 100g sticky rice for a half hour, then cook in the rice cooker like regular rice, together with ~10% more water than your rice cooker calls for.
The 100g of sticky rice is good for about three bingjiang. Feel free to scale up according to the number of bingjiang that you're making.
(This is not a general technique for cooking sticky rice - because we're blending this all up, the rice texture simply doesn't matter as much as it would for, say, Lo Mai Gai.)
TO MAKE THE SYRUP:
Jaggery, slab sugar (片糖), or dark brown sugar, 120g
Water, 240g
Dried rose buds (玫瑰花茶), ~5
Melt the sugar into the water, and cook it down over a medium flame, ~10 minutes. Add the optional rose buds, and cook that down for ~5 minutes more, until syrupy.
CUCUMBER AND MILK BINGJIANG
One serving:
COOKED sticky rice from above, 60g
Milk, 60g
Milk powder (奶粉), 1 tbsp or 10g
Cucumber, 60g. Peeled and chopped.
Ice, 240g
Sugar, 1.5 tbsp
Toppings
Toasted (or roasted) peanuts, chopped, ~1/2 tbsp
Toasted sesame seeds, ~1/2 tbsp
Syrup from above, ~1-2 tsp
ฺProcess:
Blend together all the ingredients except the sticky rice, ~1 minute. Add the sticky rice, blend for ~30 seconds more.
Pour into a glass or bowl, top with the listed toppings.
MANGO BINGJIANG
One serving:
COOKED sticky rice from above, 60g
Mango, 120g. Chopped
Ice, 240g
Sugar, 1.5 tbsp
ฺToppings:
Toasted (or roasted) peanuts, chopped, ~1/2 tbsp
Toasted sesame seeds, ~1/2 tbsp
Process:
Blend together all the ingredients except the sticky rice, ~1 minute. Add the sticky rice, blend for ~30 seconds more.
Pour into a glass or bowl, top with the listed toppings.
(You can also use the brown sugar syrup from above if you like, though we prefer the mango version with just nuts. For an inauthentic twist (hey, it's only a 25 year old dish anyway), you could also try drizzling over a bit of coconut cream or sweetened condensed milk as well.)