Buko Pandan Salad

My favorite Filipino dessert is one that requires no baking at all! Buko pandan salad is a refreshing chilled dessert made up of sweet condensed milk, gulaman, buko or young coconut & mix-ins you might be familiar with if you’ve ever had halo-halo. The best buko pandan salad is rich and creamy! Traditionally, it features fresh buko that complements the sweet, nutty flavor of pandan or screwpine leaves. Let me just say that I want to be the girl with a machete who can hack at a young coconut… I’M SORRY I CAN’T BE HER! 😭

Although I’ve seen some organic grocery stores carry fresh buko, I settled on the frozen version and bottled coconut juice. It still tastes delicious and you can eliminate the extra step of going at a coconut with a knife to break it open. Also, the difference between buko and mature coconut that you might be thinking of is that buko has softer flesh and more water. On the outside, buko has a green shell or white husk.

90% of the recipe process below is opening jars and cans, and then emptying them into a bowl. If you’ve never heard of the following ingredients, here’s a quick glossary to know what’s going into your buko pandan salad.

• gulaman: Gulaman is agar agar in English. It’s a carbohydrate made from processed seaweed that is similar to gelatine. However, it’s commonly used in the Philippines because it can set up at room temperature. While gelatine requires refrigeration, gulaman is ideal given the high humidity and temperatures there.
• nata de coco: Anytime you’ve ordered lychee jelly with your milk tea, that chewy topping is actually made with nata de coco! Nata de coco is a coconut gel made with fermented coconut water. It’s my favorite of the mix-ins in buko pandan salad, so I doubled the quantity of it from Kawaling Pinoy’s recipe.
• kaong: Kaong is the fruit of a sugar palm tree. They look like white, translucent jellybeans!

You’ll commonly find jars of nata de coco and kaong in the same aisle where the ube halaya jam is at your local Filipino grocery store. In case you are looking for a supplier in the NYC area that delivers to your door, you can order online from Tindahan ni Luz and Phil-Am Foods. Without further ado, I hope y’all enjoy the recipe and share some buko pandan salad with your roommates and family.