Let’s just get this out of the way up front: li hing mui is really a borderline revolting food.
I had heard so much about it, how people crave it, how it is the most awesomest flavor since chocolate. And I was hell-bent to try some once I got to Hawaii.
I started out with a passionfruit margarita with li hing mui powder sprinkled in and coated onto the rim with the salt. This was absolutely delightful, and only jet lag and monstrous fatigue kept me from ordering about 5 in a row. For starters, passionfruit + tequila + salt = most perfect cocktail foodnerd can imagine. And the li hing mui gave it a little smoky-tangy kick. I licked the whole rim clean, and loved the whole thiing.
So i had high hopes for the little packets of li hing mui plums, and other things like ginger and mango with li hing flavoring, that I kept scooping up at Longs and at the supermarkets, etc. as gifts for friends back home. Then i figured maybe i better try the damn things before I got too carried away, so I had a little bite of a plum in the airport on the way from Kauai to the Big Island. EEEEW! YUK! I ingested maybe a microgram-sized bite, and it was awful, completely overwhelming, and fake tasting. (I noticed after this that absolutely every single li hing mui product involves aspartame, which i am still befuddled by.)
I scaled it back after that. But i did have a packet of seedless li hing mui plums for spleen and littlelee, and we busted those out a few nights ago. These were slightly less horrible than the seeded ones, but still, spleen made the most appalling faces and ran for the kitchen to spit it out. Littlelee and I could find some pleasure in it, but still that one plum we’d nibbled at got chucked into the trash. I had some li hing ginger for my mom, who loves all ginger things, and she thought it was pretty bad.
So what gives? Why does a tiny bit of the powder do fantastical things for my cocktail, but yet the smallest bites of the dried-fruit forms make even the hardest-core foodnerds run gagging? Are we just Yankee lame-asses? WTF with the aspartame?
I have a packet of the powder, and I will be doing some cocktail experiments as the opportunity arises. But those fruits are all getting the boot, sadly.
hey there, love all the hawaiian posts, and looking forward to some cali posts as well! i’m told the reason that artificial sweetener was originally added to crack seed is because it intensifies the licorice taste. i think the original sweetener was something more like stevia, which works better with the glycyrrhizin in the licorice, but like, aspartame’s easier to find and cheaper. i haven’t had cracked seed or li hing fruits in a really long time, i don’t know if it has gotten sweeter still in the ensuing years.
oh yay, it’s so nice to hear your voice, santos, and to know you actually still read my blog even though i’ve been completely AWOL for so long! (I am still catching up with everyone’s blogs, but I did poke my head in on greenbananas every so often even through the worst of it all.)
my mom reports that the li hing mango i gave her is awesome, but it’s a different brand from all the others, so perhaps i just got bad-quality li hing mui. She’s going to bring it here for me to try in a week or so, and I’ll post an update about it.
I will feel much better if it’s not just me, and in fact the stuff we bought was junk.
Hi, I can’t believe you didn’t like the seeds!!!! I LOVE them, but that may be I’ve been eating them my whole life and I’m Asian. I’m a Li Hing Mui freak, anything Li Hing Mui i’ll love, but sadly only a few places where I live sell it.
Hi, I found this entry while googling li hing mui. I live in Hawaii and grew up on li hing mui. The brand and type of li hing mui definitely makes a big difference in taste and some of them can be pretty revolting. For the not so good brands, you pretty much need to have grown up on the stuff in order to even eat it. If you have a good brand, though, the stuff can be wonderful and addicting. Mmm…my mouth is watering already, maybe I’ll put some of the powder on some fruit later…
Can anyone tell me if Li Hing Mui is the same as Ling Hi Mui powder?
I have had the Ling Hi Mui powder on a Hawiian Margarita and it was wonderful. Similar to allspice/cloves/starfruit. When I shop at my local Asian market they have Hawaiian Li Hing powder and it has a strange taste and is red in color.
I have lots of questions. My son and d-inlaw came back from Hawaii March 08 and raved about li hing mui. So, I ordered some from http://www.snackhawaii.com. I would love some recipes using the powder. Presumably it’s used more in desserts and drinks. I’d be interested to know if there are any chicken recipes for the grill that I could use the powder. It just arrived today and am waiting to purchase a fresh pineapple to sprinkle it on before I open it up.
I use Li hing Mui on pork loin and pineapple on the grill. While that is grilling I put 1/2 cup pineapple juice, 1 tsb corn starch and Li Hing Mui to taste in a sauce pan and heat till thick. When pork is done place pineapple over the pork and pour the sauce over the whole thing, then slap your momma for not thinking of that sooner! Wonderful taste! A great guest pleas’er for little money and time.
What a shame you didn’t enjoy these little treats…I grew up with them when we lived in Japan as a chile and I knew them as cemores/simores…not sure how to spell it…and I still love them…They are an aquired taste for sure…I would caution anyone who would want to try them, but that is just me…!
Li Hing Mui is amazing! My first experience with it was on a margarita as well, and I was hooked after that! The Jade brand of Li Hing Mui powder is really good (well that’s the one I like anyways). My fave snack are li hing watermelons…they’re the sour watermelon candies coated in li hing, so good!