For today’s recipe, we want to show you how to make Thai Mango Sticky Rice with Butterfly Pea Flower Blue Rice. It’s a sweet, creamy, and colorful dessert that’s as easy as it is delicious!
Called Khao Niao Mamuang (ข้าวเหนียวมะม่วง) Mango sticky rice is a super famous dish that you will see all over Thailand during mango season.
It consists of sticky rice stirred with sweetened coconut milk and served with sliced mango on the side. You can enjoy it warm or cold as a dessert or for breakfast.
Butterfly pea flowers are bright blue flowers native to tropical Asia. They are commonly used in Thai cuisine to add a touch of color and a sweet, grassy flavor.
Our Mango Blue Sticky recipe features all of the traditional Thai coconut rice ingredients — namely sticky rice, coconut milk, a sweetener, and mango. Plus dried butterfly pea flowers to turn the rice blue.
Let’s take a look at each ingredient:
White Sticky Rice
Also called sweet sticky rice and known as Khao Niao (ข้าวเหนียว), this long grain rice becomes super sticky when cooked due to its high starch content.
You should be able to find it at your local Asian grocery store, well stocked supermarkets, or online.
You must use glutinous rice for best results, but if you can’t find it, you can use other types of glutinous rice like Thai jasmine rice or sushi rice.
Dried butterfly pea flowers
Butterfly Pea flowers are also known as Asiatic Pigeon Wings or Blue Pea. They’re sold dried or powdered in Asian grocery stores or online, and you can use one or the other depending on what you can find.
Don’t worry, we’ll show you how to use both!
To make the blue sticky rice, you need to dip the flowers in hot water to release their blue pigments and then cook the rice in the blue water. Very easily!
If you prefer to steam the rice instead, first soak the raw rice in blue water for about 3-4 hours and then drain before cooking the rice.
coconut milk
Canned coconut milk is the top choice for making Thai blue rice because it’s thick and creamy. It’s also dairy-free and vegan, which is a nice plus!
sweetener
The classic Thai mango sticky rice uses sugars like powdered sugar or palm sugar to sweeten the coconut milk — and quite a lot of it.
We halved the amount of sugar in our recipe because the combination of sticky rice, coconut and butterfly pea blossoms already tastes quite sweet.
If you want to avoid sugar altogether, you can use erythritol instead. This safe and natural sweetener is almost as sweet as sugar but has no calories – try it!
mango
Mangoes must be ripe, sweet and juicy. And the best variety of mango for Thai sticky rice is name dawk may.
It’s a yellow-skinned mango with incredibly sweet flesh. We tried it and absolutely loved it!
But you can still make this Thai blue rice with green-skinned mangoes if they’re easier to find.
Alright, now it’s time to gather all the ingredients and jump straight to the recipe!
And if you want to discover more ways to use butterfly pea flowers, check out these butterfly pea latte, blue cake, and blue chia pudding recipes!