What Is Jaggery and How Can I Use It?
Jaggery is easier to cook with than it looks. Here's how to choose, use, and store it, what to substitute, and 4 recipes to get you started.
Key Points
- Unrefined South Asian sugar boiled from cane juice or palm sap into hard blocks.
- Deep caramel and molasses flavor with mineral notes; used in sweets, dals, and chutneys.
- Too hard to scoop: chop or grate it, or melt it in warm water first.
- Substitute brown sugar or palm sugar roughly cup for cup, expecting milder flavor.
What is jaggery?
Jaggery is the traditional unrefined sugar of South and Southeast Asia. It is made by boiling down sugarcane juice, or sometimes date or palm sap, until it sets into dense blocks or cones.
Because nothing is spun off or refined out, it keeps its molasses and minerals along with a deep caramel flavor that plain sugar loses. The taste is its whole point: warm, smoky, almost fudgy, with an earthy mineral edge behind the sweetness.
Color runs from golden to dark mahogany depending on how long it was cooked and whether it came from cane or palm.
In Indian kitchens it sweetens far more than desserts. It rounds out the tang in a Pulikacchal tamarind rice paste and balances heat in chickpea curries like Chhole Alu. It is also the backbone of sweets like modak and chikki, and it sweetens vegetable braises such as Meetha Kaddoo.
The blocks are rock hard, so jaggery does not scoop like white sugar. Chop or grate it, or melt it in a splash of warm water before stirring into a dish. If a recipe gives a cup measure, pack the grated jaggery the way you would brown sugar.
For a swap, brown sugar or palm sugar comes closest because both carry molasses. Use them roughly cup for cup, knowing the flavor will be milder and cleaner.
For how molasses behaves in baking and how to store sugar, see sugar.
Quick facts
- In Chinese
- 粗糖
- British (UK) term
- Jaggery
- en français
- jaggery
- en español
- azúcar de palmera
Recipes using jaggery
There are 4 recipes that contain this ingredient.
Fried Delicious Modak
Modak is an Indian traditional dish, especially prepared on Ganesh Chaturthi...... Modaks are considered to be the favorite sweet dish of Lord Ganesha......This dish is very delicious, people especially kids love it....
Pulikacchal
Pulikacchal: the tangy-sweet South Indian tamarind paste for puliyodharai rice. Mustard seeds, chilies, jaggery, and sesame cooked down into a shelf-stable rice mix.
Meetha Kaddoo (Braised Butternut Squash with Jaggery)
Meetha Kaddoo with butternut squash braised in fenugreek, asafoetida, and coriander, then glazed with jaggery and mango powder. A sweet-spiced Indian vegetarian side.
Chhole Alu
Chhole alu: North Indian chickpeas and potatoes in a tangy-spicy gravy with jaggery, tamarind, garam masala, and green chiles. A Punjabi street-food classic made vegetarian and satisfying.
