How to Make Pandan Juice and Pandan Extract at Home

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Pandan-flavored desserts are common in South East Asia.

In the Philippines, you will often see it in the form of buko pandan. It is a dessert made of young coconut strips, condensed milk, cream, and pandan jelly. I was never fond of it, but my mom was! Each time she sees it in the dessert card of a restaurant, you can be sure that is what she is having for dessert.

To make this, and other pandan-based desserts, you will need pandan juice or pandan extract.

But wait a minute, what is PANDAN?

Pandan is a tropical plant. It has leaves that are long and thin.

Fun fact: its scientific name is Pandanus amaryllifolius and is also known as screw pine plant.

Here is more geeky data on pandan.

Its leaves are widely used as a flavoring in South East and South Asian desserts. You might say it’s our vanilla flavoring!

It grows well in an equatorial climate, but is hard to cultivate in colder regions.

So I guess, I won’t be able to keep one alive, as my green thumb is, well, not green.  

I will need to buy them.

But where?

If you are not in South East Asia, you may purchase these at your local Asian Market. It comes fresh and/or frozen. I am lucky enough that my Asian Market stocks fresh leaves. A pack has about 40 leaves!

Homemade pandan extract

How to make it?

(I have a video at the end as well!)

Well, we first make pandan juice.

It really is quite easy. The hardest part is the waiting because it takes time for the extract to settle, which takes around 24 hours.

You will need a heavy-duty blender or a stick blender for this. My blender was too weak to handle the fibres of the pandan leaves and I found that my stick blender was more than capable of doing the job!

Get around 12 pieces of pandan leaves. Clean them well, and then cut into 1-inch pieces or smaller to help your blender.

If you have a strong blender, dump in the leaves into your blender and add ½ cup of water and process until you get a pulp.

If you are using a stick blender, like me, take half of the leaves and put in a tall container. Add 1/2 cup water. Blitz!

Add the remaining leaves and process until you get a pulp.

Squeeze out the juice from the pulp and strain into a jar.

You can also do another round with the remaining pulp by adding 2 tablespoons of water to it, blend for a bit and squeeze out the juice.

Now you have pandan juice.

You can already use pandan juice to flavor rice or bread.

However, if you need pandan extract, place the jar in the fridge and let the green stuff, a.k.a. chlorophyll, settle in. This will take around one to two days.

Finally, our homemade pandan extract!

Once the extract has settled to the bottom of the jar, carefully tip the clear liquid out of the jar and you will be left with around 2 tablespoons of homemade pandan extract.

Use as needed.

The juice/extract will stay in the refrigerator for up to a week. After that, it will rot.

Here’s a video on how to make homemade pandan extract:

Pin this photo for homemade pandan juice and homemade pandan extract:

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