Name: Steamed Rice Wine Milk Custard
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 3 small bowls
Cuisine: Chinese
Ingredients: 1¼ cups (300 ml) whole milk; scant ½ cup (100 g) fermented rice juice; strained; 1 tsp (5 g) sugar; honey or osmanthus honey, to taste; dried osmanthus flowers, for topping; boiling water; for scalding the bowls

Why You'll Love It

Reading Dream of the Red Chamber as a child, one scene stuck with me. Jia Baoyu is being made to study, and his sisters sneak food in to him — one of the things they bring is "sugar-steamed su lao".
The book has him take a few spoonfuls and say it's good, and that's all. I remember thinking: what kind of immortal dessert is this, that even Baoyu couldn't bear to finish it?

Much later I found out that su lao is nothing but milk and fermented rice. People in old times chilled it in summer and ate it cold — clean, cool, slippery and tender, centuries before double-skin milk ever showed up.

It goes down silkier than double-skin milk: dairy richness mixed with the gentle sweetness of rice wine and a breath of osmanthus, ice-cold.
And it couldn't be easier — steam it, chill it, eat it. There isn't a single difficult step in it.

Ingredients

Ingredients
1¼ cups (300 ml) whole milk	scant ½ cup (100 g) fermented rice juice, strained
1 tsp (5 g) sugar	honey or osmanthus honey, to taste
dried osmanthus flowers, for topping	boiling water, for scalding the bowls

Ingredient Notes

Use whole milk with at least 4.0 g protein — it sets much better.
Only the strained juice; rice grains make the texture grainy.
Lift off the milk skin so the finished custard is perfectly smooth.
Cover with cling film and poke holes so condensation doesn't drip in.
Add the osmanthus honey last — the aroma cooks off otherwise.

Instructions

1

Pour the milk into a pan with the sugar and warm it over low heat until it just begins to bubble at the edge — don't let it come to a boil. Little bubbles around the rim is exactly right.
2

Turn off the heat and let it cool. Once a milk skin has formed on top, lift it off with chopsticks or strain it out.
3

Strain the fermented rice through a sieve and measure out scant ½ cup (100 g) of the clear juice — no rice grains.
4

Pour it into the cooled milk and stir to combine.
5

Divide the mixture between small bowls, cover with cling film, and poke a few holes in it with a toothpick so steam can escape.
Once the water boils, set the bowls in and steam over medium heat for 20 minutes. Take them out, let them cool completely, then refrigerate at least 2 hours.
6

Take the chilled custards out of the fridge, drizzle with honey or osmanthus honey, scatter over a little dried osmanthus, and they're ready.
7

Scoop it up and the custard trembles on the spoon; it melts before you can even chew. Lighter than double-skin milk, smoother than panna cotta, ice-cold and so full of dairy richness.
8

Tip: use whole milk with a high protein content — it sets much better. Anything above 4.0 g per serving is ideal; low-protein milk gives a runny custard that won't hold its shape.

Recipe Notes

Steamed Rice Wine Milk Custard

Steamed rice wine milk custard: milk warmed with sugar and cooled, stirred with strained fermented rice juice, steamed 20 minutes and chilled, then finished with honey and osmanthus. Melts in the mouth, silkier than double-skin milk.

Time Needed

Prepabout 25 minutes

Steamingabout 20 minutes over medium heat once the water boils

Chilling to set2 hours or more

Totalabout 50 minutes

Plus at least 2 hours of chilling.

Prep Ahead

Scald the bowls with boiling water first, and cover with pierced cling film while steaming.
It must cool completely before chilling, and needs at least 2 hours in the fridge to set.

【Yield】1¼ cups (300 ml) milk makes 3 small bowls.
【Key ratios】milk : fermented rice juice = 3:1 (300:100), plus 1 tsp (5 g) sugar.
【Heat】warm the milk over low heat until it bubbles at the edge (don't boil it); steam over medium heat 20 minutes once the water boils.
【Setting】cool completely after steaming, then chill at least 2 hours.
【Storage】up to 2 days refrigerated — don't freeze it, it weeps when it thaws.
【Common failures】a custard that won't set means the milk was low in protein or there wasn't enough rice juice; a honeycombed surface means the heat was too high.

Nutrition (per 100 g, estimated)

Calories	about 105 kcal
Protein	about 5 g
Fat	about 4.5 g
Carbohydrates	about 11 g
of which sugars	about 10 g
Fiber	about 0 g
Sodium	about 55 mg

Estimated from the recipe amounts, not lab tested. One serving is about 150 g, about 158 kcal. Energy converted at 4 kcal/g protein, 9 kcal/g fat, 4 kcal/g carbohydrate.