The Growing Popularity of Shaved Ice
Is it serendipity that the day I feasted on my second shaved ice of the season (a few weeks ago I went in search of Filipino Halo-halo and this
afternoon I downed a Malaysian ABC Ice Kachang) an article on shaved ice appeared in the New York Times?
Clearly I'm not the only one who has shaved ice on her mind, because Julia Moskin wrote a delicious piece, "Putting the Fresh in Refreshment" today about the growing popularity of shaved ice, a subject I took up in nine posts last summer.
Yes, from June through September of last year, I ate Japanese Kakigori, Thai Nam Kang Sai, Korean Bingsoo, Chinese Baobing, Vietnamese Che Bau Mau, Indonesian Es Cendol, and Hawaiian Shave Ice in addition to Halo-halo and ABC Ice Kachang. (You can read about them all here.)
Want to make shaved ice in your own home? Moskin recommends a few option, including this Hamilton Beach Snowman Ice Shaver. I've never made shaved ice at home. Have you? Are your ready to give it a try?
--Tracy Schneider
HopeSew on June 16, 2010 at 07:40 AM
Making shaved ice at home is easy and fun! We used regular ice and added flavorings after shaving, and also froze juice to have pre-flavored shavings.
Tracy Schneider on June 16, 2010 at 10:37 PM
So glad you've given it a try, HopeSew. It's such a great summer treat!
BlogDog on June 19, 2010 at 06:06 AM
Nah. It messes up my razor. Not to mention the whiskers in the ice....
Shelly North on June 19, 2010 at 07:17 AM
Um not to be tacky - Hello - we have been eating snowcones for a long time now. We just had to make them more trendy by calling it shaved ice.
Pete on June 19, 2010 at 09:37 AM
Down here in San Antonio, we've been enjoying shaved ice for decades. There is a distinction between a sno-cone ("raspa" in spanish) and a shaved ice. A sno-cone is very granular, tiny bits of crushed ice. A shaved ice is made with ice flake (aka snow). People have their preference.
vb on June 19, 2010 at 11:37 AM
We called them snow balls, and they were literally shaved from a big block of ice with a shaver that worked a bit like a carpenter's plane, except that the shavings were caught in the front under a lid. Kids (maybe 12 to 15) operated snowball stands all over the town every summer. The syrups were normally purchased. Back in the 50s, prices started at a nickel.