Making Jaggery Punjabi style

Men make jaggery in Punjab, India.

Jaggery is a traditional non-centrifugal cane sugar consumed in Asia and Africa. It is a concentrated product of date, cane juice, or palm sap without separation of the molasses and crystals, and can vary from golden brown to dark brown in color. 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 fibers. Jaggery is mixed with other ingredients, such as peanuts, condensed milk, coconut, and white sugar, to produce several locally marketed and consumed delicacies.

Jaggery is a typical Indian product with several uses in daily food preparations and it is also used to make many sweet food preparations.

Jaggery manufacturing is done on a small scale by a group of farmers. The juice is extracted from fresh sugarcane. Then it is filtered and boiled in wide, shallow iron pans with continuous stirring and, simultaneously soda or bhindi juice is added in required quantity. While boiling, brownish foams come at the top which are continuously removed to get golden yellow colour of jaggery. The consistency of the juice becomes thick and then it is poured into the small to medium sized iron or aluminum cans where blocks of jaggery are formed after cooling. Size of the blocks can vary from 1 kg. to 12 kgs. Finally, these blocks are packed in gunny bags. From 100 kgs. of sugarcane, 10 kgs. of jaggery is made.

Jaggery is very nutritious and healthy food. Making jaggery is not required special skill and giant equipments, it is very easy to produce at small scale level.

Source : http://www.oilmachinery.com

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