[Food]

[Food] Bigsu (Shaved Ice with Toppings, 빙수)

The world is now suffering from not only COVID-19 but an abnormal climate which is causing boiling hot summers. Neither people today nor in ancient times enjoyed excessively hot weather so they also enjoyed a cold dessert like we do today :)

There are many records of people eating shaved ice, ice cubes and ice cream with sweetened toppings such as fruits and juices in Egypt, China and Italy. Obviously people in the Korean peninsular loved eating cold desserts and ice in the hot summer. After the Korean War, various western ingredients (condensed milk, jelly, chocolate and more) were imported to Korea. So Koreans shaved ice cubes into small ice flakes, topped with small sweets, and the first thing they did was to top it with sweetened red bean which is a very traditional ingredient among Korean desserts.

Patbingsu (Shaved Ice with Sweetened Red bean, additionally it's topped with rice cakes and vanilla ice cream)

Seolbing (Shaved Milk Ice with sweetened red bean)

Traditional toppings for bingsu usually include sweetened red bean, sugar coated jelly cubes, rice cake cubes, condensed milk and pieces of fruits (using canned fruits is common). However, people started to think this traditional bingsu was boring so they invented more kinds of bingsu :)

Mixed Fruits Bingsu

Strawberry Bingsu

Melon Bingsu

Green Grape Bingsu

They started to top bingsu with fresh fruits, and even filled fruits with shaved ice and toppings.

Cheesecake Bingsu

Green Tea and Chocolate Bingsu

Koreans started to make bingsu out of cheesecake, green tea, chocolate, black sesame and more. Now various types of ice shave and toppings are used for bingsu and are trending in Korea :)

If you are enduring a hot blazing summer, how about a bowl of Korean style bingsu? It will cool you down with its sweet coolness :)

Bon Appétit!