hello and welcome everyone to my channel team
lynch spirit of adventure i'm your host michael lynch and today we're going to be talking
about vietnamese iced coffee specifically sugar-free vietnamese iced coffee if you're not
familiar with what a vietnamese iced coffee is generally speaking it's a big glass or sometimes
a medium glass an ice glass full of ice with sweetened condensed milk and really really strong
espresso like coffee in it mixed and then sipped usually in hot weather today we're going to make a
sugar-free version of that we're going to be using caffe dumond which is kind of the traditional kind
of french style chicory coffee that vietnamese iced coffee is typically made with it is the same
type of stuff you've heard about in new orleans with the beignets cafe du monde because of the
french influence over vietnam that we use that and actually vietnamese iced coffees actually has
a whole vietnamese name i'll put it right here i'm not going to try to pronounce it though
because even though i'm half vietnamese i don't speak vietnam vietnamese and my mom does get onto
me about that instead of the sweetened condensed milk what i'm going to do is show you how to make
a sweetened condensed milk using evaporated milk and then this monk fruit sweetener now for
this type of stuff that we're going to be doing i use this lancato i think that's how you
pronounce it um or le canto la canto i don't know but that's how you pronounce whatever
that's how you i think that's how you say it but using this brand of sweetener because it has
um an additive to it called i don't know how to pronounce it really but urethral irrita i don't
know begins with an e it's the first ingredient you look on the back of it this actually helps the
sweetener act more like a regular sugar sweetener and so in most recipes you'll see that you added
um you know kind of tablespoon for tablespoons regular sweetener there is a brown sugar
version of this but it's super hard to find i couldn't find it myself so i generally use this
regular kind here so we're going to use this the sweetener to make a sweetened condensed milk we're
going to use in the bottom of this glass to pour our vietnamese coffee into we're going to
put our filter just on the top like this put the coffee into our filter or thin i think
that's how you pronounce it i think it's the vietnamese way to say it p-h-i-n that's thin and
it's almost like a coffee press if you kind of take a look at it here um it's got a screw
in in the bottom so you can actually screw this piece on right here and actually kind of
stamp tamps down the coffee into there and it drips through these little tiny holes you can see
them can't get into focus you can see these little tiny holes that actually make lets the coffee drip
into the cup and so you have super concentrated coffee going into the bottom of your glass
here mixing with your sweetened condensed milk mix all that together throw ice on top of it
it's absolutely refreshing so let me show you how you do this okay so the first thing
we're going to do i do have my trusty pot i actually make a lot of vietnamese coffee or at
least sweetened condensed milk my version of it in this pot so this is all blue for me please don't
make fun of it it's my trusty little saucepan but gonna just turn the heat on here to medium
on the just on a regular burner we're going to add our evaporated milk you can use any brand
the board and stuff it doesn't really matter i like the kirkland i like the costco
version i buy it by the case because i do make a lot of vietnamese coffee we're going
to put 12 ounces in there into our pot here let that kind of heat up a little bit now you'll
notice that when you get sweetened condensed milk at the story compared to the evaporated
milk the sweetened condensed milk is going to be it's like slime you know if you've ever
seen kids like make slime and stuff like that super super kind of gooey gets everywhere it just
runs forever it has long strings like mozzarella cheese almost evaporated milk's not going to be
like that but technically that kind of thickness that you see in a sweetened version it is the
sugar it's kind of also been reduced down so that's why it seems a little bit different but
you're using the same thing just without the sugar so the way that we're going to make this sweet
like sweetened condensed milk as i said we're going to take our monk fruit sweetener
here like hanto and we're going to take eight heaping tablespoons i know it sounds like a
lot it really does but it's not that's two three four five six seven eight nine ten oops eleven twelve yep i may have skipped one i don't know i
think i got 12 in there pretty sure i got 12 in there so 12 in there i like to take my handy
old red see i got a battle scar on all red from cooking with this guy so much a
good silicone spatula you can use wood or spatula i should say you can use wood
as well i just i i prefer not to use any kind of metal utensils on anything
that is nonstick like old blue here and so we're going to make sure that we dissolve
this if you don't dissolve this all the way obviously it's not going to work right for
you and what you also want to do is get it not only to the point that you don't
have any more granules in the bottom but you also want to make sure that you
are heating it and you're reducing it slightly okay so here's where we're at i
took my eight ounces of evaporated milk put in 12 tablespoons of my monk fruit sweetener
in my saucepan old blue and reduced it down slightly so i got it to boiling reduced the heat
a little bit left it on there constantly we're not constantly stirring it but just stirring
it every once in a while making sure i don't scorch it burn it whatever you want to call you
can take whatever you don't use and put it into a tupperware it will keep in the refrigerator
for three days or so i would recommend using it within three days because you will start
to have these kind of crystals forming in the bottom of your tupperware where
it starts to kind of recrystallize i guess it's because of the either the
monk fruit or the additive that's in there becoming less effective and it just starts
congealing or clumping together again you can always redissolve it if you reheat it but it's a
little bit of a hassle in the morning when you're trying to make your coffee if you want to make
this in the morning and put it in your thermos so i tend to put it in this tupperware i'll put it in
the fridge and i usually use it within three days so i'll have three more days with coffee
four total days of vietnamese coffee with a container about this size with one 12 ounce can
of evaporated milk so i've put two to three ounces of the evaporated milk mixture that i've i've
done my zero sugar sweetened condensed milk i also have my fin here so what we're going to do is
just put that on top so it goes there on top we're also going to take our inside filter out of our
fin which is right here we're going to take our cafe dumont and we're going to make sure
we get about two tablespoons in there and this is where you don't want to
necessarily be heaping you want to be about right on as possible and this is also
the preference as well what i like to do if you're putting something in here like this then
you know obviously it's kind of a cup i know it's going to be really hard to kind of see that on
camera but i like to make it as even as possible like make sure i get all the coffee grounds off
that screw in the middle and this is the tricky part so i finger kind of tighten the middle the
the filter down and i kind of spin it so as soon as i hit a little bit of resistance i'll kind
of back it off a little bit and i'll just kind of fling it forward righty tighty lefty loosey um
because you know if you're putting coffee grounds on the bottom of this just theoretically speaking
is going to be kind of lumpy and that filter is going to spin down and try to flatten it very
evenly so you're going to have some lumps as you kind of make it even and that's what that
first resistance is i like to make sure that i flatten it all out you don't want to tighten
it all the way down you want to get it about finger tight to where you start to feel the
resistance where it's not going to go anymore there is kind of like a phillips head or i'm
sorry a flat head screw kind of thing right there in your filter if you can see it it's kind
of kind of hard the light at the filter um with the um the focus but you can kind of see there
and use that to gauge that you're going to want to back this off about one full turn so whenever
you get it to basically you've kind of stopped stamped down your your grounds you know you have
it all even you're not getting resistance just because it's lumpy on the top you want to back
it off one full turn again that's also preference but if you have that too tight your water
is not going to be able to permeate through your coffee grinds and get into your your cup
here so that's what we do for that now this these fins come in a couple of different sizes
four ounces six ounces eight ounces typically most common ones you'll find are six and eights
this is a six ounce fin i do like to put about eight ounces in my coffee usually but sometimes i
will do six you know or less if i don't have a lot of the condensed milk left so we're going to put
eight ounces in here and you want to heat it to just below boiling so you don't want to take it
all the way to 12 and beyond you want about 210 at the most 190 200 is probably ideal it's in a
sweet spot i've kind of dialed this in i don't have a kettle an electric kettle with a thermostat
on it so what i do is i use this pyrex kind of measuring cup i put eight ounces in here and i put
it in my 1000 watt microwave for a minute and 45 seconds and it gets it just about perfect for
me so i'm going to do that real quick okay so i got my water see here it's not really boiling it's
like right below boiling but it's pretty steamy so kind of a i don't know if it's a crucial step
but it's definitely a way that i like to make this coffee is that i don't necessarily just
douse the the fin with this liquid as you saw there's like a screw head there in the middle
so i like just pouring it right on top of that i feel like it's a gentle way to put stuff in
there and or put the i feel like it's a gentle way to put the water in there some reason i
think that matters but i put about a quarter of an inch of water in there and i kind of
let it sit what you want to do is is let the the little bit of water you put in there kind of
infuse those dry coffee grounds you'll notice that if you kind of watch it and i'm kind of a weirdo
i stare at this stuff in the morning maybe because i'm half asleep but you can see it slowly start to
kind of go down and get absorbed into those coffee grounds below the filter and you will start to
see a couple drips of coffee come down just like that after a few seconds at that point i go ahead
and put the rest until i get to the top of the fin and yes as i said i got a little bit of water
left over i poured eight ounces into here this is a six ounce thin or filter and because i'm
probably mispronouncing that i'm my vietnamese my vietnamese side is going to be so mad at me but
i like to let it go down just a little bit and i put a smidge more coffee in there just because i'm
a coffee nut but i also don't like it to overpower everything in the glass so you have this little
cap here i mean it is nice to have a good hot water in there as you're brewing your coffee
now generally speaking you're going to see this start to drip very very fast relatively fast i
should say when you first put the water in there that will start to slow down
overall it's going to take about five minutes maybe more for the six ounces
of water to pass through these grounds and you'll see it is slow it gets slower and
slower towards the end you can open this keep opening it and checking on it it's not going
to mess anything up but a word of caution like right now looking at it it's like oh it's gonna
take forever and if you keep checking it like this i swear the more you look at this coffee it
never or the water i swear the more that you look at this water you will swear it does not move at
all if you stare at it like that so a good piece of advice is just to close it up and not stare
at it and let it do its thing like i said it's gonna take about five minutes unless you have your
filter too tight in which case if it is taking too long you're gonna have some stronger coffee you do
run the chance of making it better if you let it over brew and so what i like to do if i've noticed
that my coffee is not draining as fast as i'd like usually when i notice that the top of the screw
head or the filter head is showing even if it's not is just below the surface of the water it's
hot so i usually take a butter knife and i'll just open it back up another half turn sometimes three
quarters of a turn and that will give it enough opening to get the rest of the water
through not let it pour out but let it just brew and not become better
so let's give this a couple minutes okay so here's where we're at in the process
we've got all of our coffee to drain from our six ounce filter into the bottom here you can
see there's no more drips or anything like that so i'll go ahead and take the fin off you have
to be careful if you have like i said they do make some of these that are one piece for this
cup and the saucer is one piece mine is not so if you have it's a two piece like this you
want to make sure that as you're pulling this off be kind of careful hold down the bottom piece take
that off you'll have some residual coffee in there it kind of creates a vacuum and if you pull that
off sometimes like it'll just go flying and the coffee go flying it's not a cool thing at all um
to do now you'll see some places some restaurants it'll look like this and they kind of just keep
it like this until you order they'll throw ice in there and then they'll give you a really
long spoon to kind of like mix it up with the ice to kind of mix the sweetened condensed milk
together i don't tend to do that what i tend to do is actually use it i'd sip this with a straw so
i'll use a straw to mix that up let me grab one voila so we're going to take our straw here
just kind of this is just the way i do it i like to kind of mix it up it's generally
about the color you get if you've reduced your evaporated milk a lot you're going to want to make
sure you kind of scrape the bottom because it will start to kind of stick on the sides and the bottom
of your your glass and then the last thing to do is add your i use crushed ice but to
add your ice to this usually do this over the sink for the video i'm trying to
do it here just right here on the counter i've got a big chunk there we go there we go so what i like to do is kind of mix it up
usually i get it just right there on the money where it doesn't overflow kind of like
here and i do like making big old glasses of this coffee because it is really delicious i
like to sip it throughout the morning this is not something you would down it is relatively
strong coffee i get it kind of mixed in there i need to see what it tastes like so that is perfect very strong but it has
sweetness it takes the edge off this that kind of strong coffee taste you can taste
a little bit of that chicory in there you definitely taste the sweetened condensed milk
but it's not overpowering either so it really kind of balance itself out so i'll make sure i put
the recipe um description in the description of the video one thing that i want to make sure i
clarify in the video is that evaporated milk does have a little bit of natural sugar so all in all
if you look at the the nutrition facts of this evaporated milk for 12 ounces each serving which
is a one ounce serving has three grams of sugar none of which is added sugar so in this case this
vietnamese iced coffee is zero grams added sugar but you will have a little bit about six grams
of natural sugar just from the evaporated milk that is a dramatic reduction in the amount of
sugar that's normally in a vietnamese iced coffee so if you like this recipe if you liked how simple
it was to make give me a like subscribe comment it's all right so i'm going to leave you with this
it's a holiday season about to take a two week road trip to the east coast with bertha be taking
plenty of snacks with me maybe some banana bread zero added sugar banana bread as well maybe
i'll do a video of that of course watch out for my next videos my road trip to the east
coast over the holidays until next time you
