Name: Vegan Mango Lassi
Prep time: 5 min
Total time: 5 min
Cuisine: Indian
Ingredients: 200ml/4 fifths cup cold coconut milk; 125ml/half cup cold mango juice; 1 mango; handful ice cubes; 2.5cm/1in fresh ginger or half tsp ground; seeds of 4 cardamoms, ground or pounded (optional); fresh mint leaves as garnish (optional)

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Vegan Mango Lassi

Summer time means summer drinks in our house and this Vegan Mango Lassi is just one of many, many drinks that my kids and I have been enjoying to date! I recently released another cookbook, and we had to do lots of taste testing and this was just a natural variation of the Mango Lassi that went into the book.

I love my lassi, a traditional Indian yoghurt drink that is drunk both as a savoury drink and sweet, flavoured with spices and even fruit. The most common fruit lassi for many is probably Mango Lassi, perhaps because almost every Indian restaurant, good or bad, serves it!

We use coconut milk fairly often in our kitchen, a little here, a little there, and then sometimes, a whole lot somewhere! In fact, we have another summer drink made with coconut milk, if you like mocktails, you’ll love the Virgin Strawberry Pina Colada. Of course, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t turn it into an adult drink!

Virgin Strawberry Pina Colada

Today’s recipe, Vegan Mango Lassi is a super quick recipe that you can whip up in no time at all, the only “real work” involved is the peeling and slicing of the mango. I’ve replaced the dairy yoghurt with coconut milk. It is a luscious drink – think ambrosia – refreshing when very cold and exceedingly satisfying, with the mango and coconut flavours playing so well together, with just a hint of spice from the ginger. The cardamom stays firmly in the background. The drink is fairly thick as the coconut milk thickens in consistency as it’s whipped.

Getting the best of your Vegan Mango Lassi

Place your coconut milk in the fridge, so your lassi will be nice and cold when made. I am presuming that your juice will be in the fridge.

A quick note on my lassis:

They are thick and traditional (I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere). Whatever milk/yoghurt I’m using, I don’t like watering it down, the only other liquid I sometimes use, is a fruit juice to complement the fruit, as in today’s recipe.
When they are flavoured, the flavour is subtle, never overpowering the milk or yoghurt base. So my mango lassis are never going to be yellow like you see in most mango lassi pictures, I don’t employ any cosmetic enhancers either, like saffron, turmeric or yellow food colouring!

Did you know that mangoes are expensive here in the UK? Oh yes. At the cheapest, perhaps about £1.50 each. What’s that in US dollars? $2.20 or so? And that’s the price in summer. So, that’s another reason not to load up on the mangoes! Seriously though, I do like my lassis heavy on the milk.

Having said that, this Vegan Mango Lassi does get special treatment, I didn’t want the coconut milk to overpower the final flavour, so as mentioned above, I do add some shop bought mango juice to the recipe too. Go for the best mango juice you can get, preferably, pure juice, not from concentrate and most certainly, with nothing added – pure mango juice.

I love adding a little ginger and cardamom to my traditional mango lassi and have decided to keep the ginger in this recipe for just that teasing hint of something different. The cardamom, I leave up to you, and so have left that as an optional ingredient. I rather like the cardamom in here but my kids prefer it without, so I’ll let you decide which way you’re going with that and get back to me!

Can you use light coconut milk? Absolutely! If you are lucky enough to get fresh coconut milk, that’s even better.

What’s your favourite lassi? Have you tried a vegan version? Let me know with a comment below, and be sure to check out my Drinks page for more recipes and also reviews.

Lin xx