Che Vietnamese sweet and beverage dessert soup.
Che Vietnamese sweet and beverage dessert soup is a traditional Vietnamese sweet beverage, dessert soup or pudding. Varieties of Che are made with mung beans, black-eyed peas, kidney beans, tapioca, jelly (clear or grass), fruit (longan, mango, durian, lychee or jackfruit), and coconut cream. Other types are made with ingredients such as salt, aloe vera, seaweed, lotus seed, sesame seed, sugar palm seeds, taro, cassava and pandan leaf extract. Che are often prepared with one of a number of varieties of beans, tubers, and/or glutinous rice, cooked in water and sweetened with sugar. In southern Vietnam, che are often garnished with coconut creme.
Che in North Vietnam
In northern Vietnam, che is also the word for the tea plant. Tea is also known as nuoc che in the North or more commonly tra in both regions.
The Chinese category of sweet soups called tong sui are very similar to che.
Varieties of Che
There is a nearly endless variety of named dishes with the prefix che, thus it is impossible to produce a complete list. therefore What follows is a list of the most typical traditional varieties of che.
Beans and pulses
- Che ba màu (literally “three colors che”) – usually including green mung beans, white black-eyed peas, and red azuki beans, although people can cook with any ingredients making any three colours they like (compare with halo halo).
- Che đậu đen – made from black beans; one of the most popular varieties of che, particularly for northern Vietnamese
- Che đậu đỏ – made from azuki beans, usually using whole beans, rarely using ground beans.
- Che đậu huyết – made from red beans.
- Che đậu trắng – made from black-eyed peas. Oftentimes, this dessert is just referred to as che đậu as it is one of the most common bean dessert for southern Vietnamese.
- Che đậu xanh – made from whole mung beans
- prepared in southern Vietnam, uses less mung beans)
Rice, grains, tubers and cereals
- Che bánh lọt – made from bánh lọt – a cake from Huế (lọt means “to sift”).
- Che bắp (the Southern dialect) or chè ngô (the Northern dialect) – made from corn and tapioca rice pudding
- Che sắn lắt – made from sliced cassava
- Che cốm – made from young rice.
- Che củ súng – made from water lily bulbs
- Che hột lựu (called by this name in southern Vietnam and by che hạt lựu in northern Vietnam) – in this dish, rice paste are cut into pomegranate seed-shaped pieces.
- Che hột éo – basil seed drink
- Che khoai lang – made from sweet potato
- Che kê – made from millet
- Che khoai tây – made from potato
- Che mè đen – made from black sesame seeds
- Che sen – made from thin vermicelli and jasmine flavoured syrup
- Che hạt sen – made from lotus seeds
- Che sen trần
- Che sen dừa – made from lotus seeds and coconut water
- Che củ sen – made from lotus tubers
- Che mã thầy (or che củ năng) – made from water chestnuts
- Cơm rượu – mildy alcoholic chè.
Fruits and plants
- Che hoa quả mixture of different fruits including pineapple, watermelon, apple, pear, mango, lychee, dried banana, cherry, and dried coconut with milk, yogurt, and syrup
- Che nhãn – made from longan
- Che trái cây – made from fruits
- Che xoài – made from mango
- Che trái vải – lychee and jelly
- Che bưởi – made from grapefruit oil and slivered rind
- Che chuối – made from bananas and tapioca (Vietnamese: bột báng)
- Che sầu riêng – made from durian
- Che thốt nốt – made from sugar palm seeds
- Che mít – made from jackfruit
- Che lô hội – made from Aloe vera
- Hột é – made from Sterculia lychnophora extract and basil seeds
Jellies
- Che thạch or che rau câu – made from agar agar
- Che thạch lựu – made from seaweed and other pomegranate seed-shaped tapioca pearls.
- Che thạch sen – made from seaweed and lotus seeds
- Sương sáo – Grass jelly
- Che thạch sen – thin, vermicelli-like jellies.
Dumplings
- Che bột lọc from small cassava and rice flour dumplings
- Che con ong (literally “bee sweet soup”; so named because this dish is viscous and yellow, like honey) – made from glutinous rice, ginger-root, honey, and molasses– this is a northern dish, usually cooked to offer to the ancestors at Tết.
- Che bánh xếp – green bean wrapped in a tapioca skin dumpling eaten in a coconut milk base with smaller pieces of tapioca. Translated to English, the dish is “folded cake dessert”.
- Che trôi nước – balls made from mung bean paste in a shell made of glutinous rice flour; served in a thick clear or brown liquid made of water, sugar, and grated ginger root.