Jaggery

Jaggery is a traditional non-centrifugal cane sugar consumed in the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and Africa. It is a concentrated product of cane juice and often date or palm sap without separation of the molasses and crystals, and can vary from golden brown to dark brown in colour. It contains up to 50% sucrose, up to 20% invert sugars, and up to 20% moisture, with the remainder made up of other insoluble matter, such as wood ash, proteins, and bagasse fibres. Jaggery is very similar to muscovado, an important sweetener in Portuguese, British and French cuisine. The Kenyan Sukari ngutu/nguru has no fibre; it is dark and is made from sugar cane and also sometimes extracted from palm tree. Jaggery comes from Portuguese terms jágara, jagra, derived from Malayalam ശർക്കര (), Kannada ಬೆಲ್ಲ (), Hindi शक्कर () from Sanskrit शर्करा () or also in Hindi, गुड़ (gur). It is a doublet of sugar. Jaggery is made of the products of sugarcane and the toddy palm tree. The sugar made from the sap of the date palm is more prized and less commonly available outside of the regions where it is made. The toddy palm is tapped for producing jaggery in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, syrup extracts from kithul (Caryota urens) trees are widely used for jaggery production. All types of the sugar come in blocks or pastes of solidified concentrated sugar syrup heated to . Traditionally, the syrup is made by boiling raw sugarcane juice or palm sap in large, shallow, round-bottomed vessels. Historically, the sugarcane cultivators used crushers that were powered by oxen, but all modern crushers are power-driven. These crushers are placed in fields near the sugarcane plants. The cut and cleaned sugarcane is crushed and the extracted cane juice is collected in a large vessel. A quantity of the juice is transferred to a smaller vessel for heating on a furnace. The vessel is heated for about an hour. Dried wood pulp from the crushed sugarcane is traditionally used as fuel for the furnace.