Crushed Strawberry Drink
Crushed Strawberry Drink is another crushed-fruit drink from Korea. It smells like one of my favorite candies of all time - the hard candy with liquid filling where the wrapper is designed to look like a strawberry. I'm sure at least some readers know what candy I'm talking about.
The juice itself doesn't taste as good as it smells though - it's a really sweet, flat strawberry flavor. My first instinct was right, and it does taste like the liquid inside of that strawberry candy. The thing that makes this a weird drink though is that it has little chunks of strawberry floating around in it. Most people are used to orange juice having pulp, but not strawberry pulp. Read More >
Asparagus Juice
Most juice comes from fruits, although we have seen some made from seeds, flowers, and herbs. But here's a vegetable that I never thought would be made into a drink: asparagus juice.
When I was a kid growing up I hated asparagus. We had it growing in our garden and my mom would make it steamed about once a week and force everyone to eat it. It wasn't until I started to like dipping it in horseradish that it became edible. While it's ok in limited portions these days, asparagus will not show up on my plate unless it's a free side at a restaurant that I don't know about.
So, I don't know that they were thinking when they decided to squeeze the juice out of (what seems like) a very un-juicy vegetable to make asparagus juice. Read More >
Thai Galingale Juice
I tried this juice at the floating market north of Bangkok, where it was in one of the stalls on the shore. There were several juices sitting there in large glass vats, and when I ordered the galingale juice (by pointing), the lady who owned the stand ladled a watery purple liquid into a cup full of ice. A Thai friend I was with explained that it's a purple flower called something like chun or chuan, I can't remember exactly. It's pretty difficult to explain the taste - it is similar to the roselle juice in that it kinda tastes like you're eating a flower. But other than than it's slightly sweet and refreshing over ice, great to cool off on the side of the river on a hot summer day in Thailand. Read More >
Pok Pun Ja
This is a really good drink from Korea. It tastes sweet just like fruit punch should taste. The flavor reminds me of drinking Juicy Juice when I was a kid, and just like that delicious children's beverage, I have no clue what kind of fruits or berries actually went into making Pok Pun Ja. The only downside is that it comes in a really small bottle, like a lot of other Korean drinks.
Roselle Drink from Thailand
This roselle drink is from the same restaurant and same brand as the longan juice. It tastes a lot like rose, or a very light cranberry juice. While it's pretty good and refreshing, I wasn't a big fan of the somewhat artificial-tasting flowery flavor.
It did, however, beat out the longan juice in a side-by-side taste test. I couldn't help comparing since I ordered them both at the same time. I even got a second opinion who agreed that the roselle juice was the better pick out of the two.
Roselle is a type of hibiscus flower, which is used often for making teas and is made into a drink in many other countries as well, including Mexico where it is called "agua de Flor de Jamaica"
