Hibiscus coconut rice – dessert made with Carolina Gold rice!

Last Updated on November 28, 2022 by Aaron von Frank

This hibiscus coconut rice dessert features sublime flavors and history-rich ingredients from around the world, many of which can be grown in your garden. 

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Homegrown from around the world

We love various ethnic cuisines, which is reflected in some of the foods we grow. As a result, we sometimes get to fuse unusual flavors from around the world into a single novel recipe, as is the case with this hibiscus coconut rice dessert recipe.  

The ginger, makrut lime leaves, and lemongrass we grow originated in Southeast Asia. The edible fruit-like calyxes/roselles of Hibiscus sabdariffa we grow are native to West Africa. (If you’ve never had them, hibiscus roselles feature a gorgeous vibrant red color and citrus-like tangy flavor.) 

The combination of flavors in this hibiscus coconut rice dessert recipe is quite spectacular, and we can’t wait for you to make your own! 

Ingredients you’ll need to make hibiscus coconut rice:

Nope, you don’t have to grow all — or any — of the ingredients required to make this recipe! You can buy them online or from brick-and-mortar grocery stores like local Asian grocers or even Whole Foods. 

Here are all the ingredients you’ll need to make this recipe, including Amazon affiliate purchase links for harder-to-find ingredients that might be more challenging for you to source locally:

1. Carolina Gold rice – This is a history-rich, yellow colored rice grown right here in South Carolina, our home state. As Anson Mills describes it, Carolina Gold rice is perfect for making into “sticky Asian-style rice,” which is ideal for this recipe. (More on Carolina Gold rice below!) Alternative: use the “sticky rice” of your choice. 
2. Dried hibiscus roselles.
3. Makrut lime leaves, aka kaffir lime or Thai lime (you can also buy these from an Asian grocery).
4. Ginger – We use fresh baby ginger, but you can use mature ginger rhizomes which are commonly sold in grocery stores.
5. Lemongrass – We use fresh lemongrass, but you can use dried lemongrass if necessary.
6. One can of organic whole coconut milk.
7. Honey – ideally local or from your own hives!

Quick note about Carolina Gold rice

There are two primary species of cultivated rice in the world: Asian rice (Oryza sativa) and African rice (Oryza glaberrima). Carolina Gold rice is an heirloom African rice species imported to the US and cultivated in the Southeast as a result of the slave trade. 

The name “Carolina Gold” is owing to:

1. the long history of the cultivar being grown in South Carolina since the 1780s (although it was nearly lost to history in the 20th century); and
2. the golden color of its unhulled grains.

Carolina Gold is a highly flavorful and nutritious rice. However, like many African rice varieties, its grains are more brittle than Asian rice grains, leading to broken grains during processing. Thus, you might note the non-uniformity of the rice grain sizes when using Carolina Gold rice or when looking at pictures throughout this article. 

Hibiscus coconut rice: step-by-step with process photos

There are three steps to this recipe which we’ll detail below. First, you’ll make a concentrated hibiscus spiced tea. Second, you’ll use the hibiscus tea to infuse your rice. Finally, you’ll steam your rice while making your coconut milk-hibiscus sauce. 

Then you’ll put all the deliciousness together into serving bowls!  

Step 1. Make hibiscus roselle spiced tea. 

The hibiscus roselle spiced tea contains the following ingredients: 

• 2 cups water
• 6 grams DRIED Hibiscus sabdariffa roselles, or about 1/2 cup (if using fresh roselles, you’d probably use closer to 1 cup)
• 12 grams diced fresh lemongrass (~3 heaping tbsp)
• 6 grams diced ginger (preferably baby ginger), or about 2 tbsp 
• 2 makrut lime leaves, diced (we use fresh but dried is fine)
• 1/4 cup honey
• pinch of salt

How to make hibiscus spiced tea:

• Place all ingredients in a small saucepan with LID ON over medium-low heat for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. (We kept our hibiscus tea at 210°F / 99°C on an induction stove burner).
• Remove from heat and let mixture return to room temperature for about 30 minutes. Strain and set aside tea for next step.  

Optional: Dehydrate your strained ingredients, then blend them to a powder in a spice grinder. They still pack a lot of flavor and make a nice spice blend or garnish for this dessert or other recipes! 

Another option: Candy some of your strained hibiscus calyxes by coating them in sugar and drying them on a cooling rack overnight. These candied hibiscus roselles can also be served as a garnish when plating this dessert recipe. 

Step 2. Pre-rinse rice four times, then soak rice for at least 8 hours in hibiscus tea. 

Second, you’ll prepare your rice. You’ll start by quickly rinsing then draining the cloudy water four times. The water will be more clear but not completely clear after four rinse cycles.

Pre-rinsing your rice removes some of the excess starch that would otherwise make the rice too sticky for this recipe. Side note: Rather than dumping the rinse water down the drain, use it on indoor plants since it’s high in nitrogen and phosphorus.

Once strained, put your pre-rinsed rice into a covered glass jar or bowl with your hibiscus roselle spiced tea, then into your fridge. This step is intended to infuse the rice with color and flavor, plus add some starch and flavor to the hibiscus tea as well. 

Ingredients: 

• 1 cup Carolina Gold rice
• 1 3/4 cups hibiscus roselle spiced tea (all the tea from previous step after straining)

Let the rice and hibiscus tea sit for 8-12 hours in a jar in your fridge. If possible, give the mixture a stir at the halfway point to make sure the red-colored tea is fully penetrating the heavier rice on the bottom in order to optimally infuse it. 

Next, strain out your rice and set your roselle tea aside. Once strained, we had a little less than 1 1/2 cups hibiscus roselle tea remaining, meaning the rice absorbed about 1/4 cup of the tea while soaking.

Step 3. Make coconut milk-roselle tea sauce and steam your rice

Now it’s cooking time! You’ll be steaming your rice and making your coconut milk-roselle tea sauce at the same time since they both take about 30 minutes. 

Making the perfect steamed rice:

There are people far more knowledgeable and experienced than us when it comes to making the perfect steamed rice. If you want to take a deeper dive into the topic or see different kitchen tools you can use (if you don’t have a rice steamer), we recommend watching Hot Thai Kitchen’s steamed rice YouTube tutorial.   

If you don’t have an actual rice steamer, you can improvise like we did… 

Thankfully, we have a metal pasta strainer that fits snuggly into a large deep pot, plus a lid that fits snuggly over the strainer/pot combo. You don’t want to run out of water while steaming your rice, so make sure you have a deep enough pan and add plenty of water to start!

Again, watch the Hot Thai Kitchen tutorial linked above if you’ve never steamed rice before or are trying to better understand the process! 

We steamed our rice for a little over 25 minutes, then let it sit covered for another 5 minutes before removing it from the steamer. 

Making coconut milk-roselle tea sauce

At the same time as you’re steaming your rice, you’ll also make your coconut milk-roselle spiced tea sauce. This sauce is absolutely delicious and brings the whole dish together… 

Ingredients:

• 1 can whole organic coconut milk, 13.5 ounces
• 1 1/2 cups hibiscus roselle spiced tea (strained from rice in prior step)
• Additional 6 grams dried hibiscus roselles (about 1/2 cup) 
• Additional 1/3 cup honey

How to make sauce:

• Put all ingredients in saucepan over medium heat and slowly bring it to a boil, stirring occasionally. 
• Once boiling, turn heat down to low and let simmer for another 20 minutes. Strain out hibiscus roselles for a smoother, more uniform-colored sauce. 
• Alternative: We put our strained hibiscus roselles in a Ninja with 1/2 cup of the finished coconut hibiscus sauce and blended it. This made a darker, tangier sauce but the roselles don’t completely pulverize, so tiny chunks remain. If you go this route, you can use this second sauce to drizzle over the rice, as you’ll see later.

Final plating

Now it’s time to put your ingredients together into an attractive presentation. Here’s how we plated ours in case you want to do the same:

1. Put steamed rice into a small round bowl that’s smaller than your serving bowl, then tamp it flat with a spatula. 

2. Turn rice-filled bowl upside down then place it in the center of your serving bowl. 

3. Pour coconut-hibiscus sauce around rice and drizzle some on top of rice. Alternately, if you made a second sauce by blending your cooked roselles with 1/2 cup of coconut sauce (as we did) you can pour this sauce over your rice, then use the main lighter-colored sauce for the base. 

4. A green garnish makes a nice complimentary color to the other pink ingredients. A sprig of mint will do.

We used ginger flower buds we recently harvested and fermented in the sublime liquid from honey-fermented kumquats we made (we’re quite pleased with that touch!). Also, if you dehydrated and ground your strained tea ingredients from Step 1, you can use these as a dusting over the dish. 

When eating this dish, you smush the rice down into the sauce so you get sauce plus rice in each spoonful. You can also just skip the fanciness and serve the rice and sauce mixed together, more like a rice pudding. 

Regardless of how you eat it, the flavor combinations are incredible. We’d say they’re “out of this world,” but each ingredient has a rich history firmly planted in this world, albeit from different geographical regions. 

Recipe: Hibiscus coconut rice, a dessert made with Carolina Gold rice

Enjoy!

KIGI,

Related articles to sink your teeth into:

• How to grow organic ginger and turmeric in any climate
• How to grow and use makrut lime
• How to grow organic lemongrass in any climate
• How to grow and use edible Hibiscus sabdariffa
• Recipe: Hibiscus relish or chutney, a cranberry alternative