Palm Sugar

Palm sugar is the sweetness of Thai cooking. It is softer and rounder than white sugar, with a gentle caramel taste, and it melts easily into sauces.

In savoury dishes it is not there to make food taste sweet. It balances the salt of fish sauce and the sourness of lime and tamarind, so that no single flavour sticks out.

How it is made

Farmers climb coconut or sugar palms (tan) at dawn and dusk to collect the sap that drips from cut flower stalks into bamboo tubes. The sap is boiled in wide pans for hours until it thickens and turns golden, then poured into moulds or tins to set. The Thai name nam tan pip comes from the large square tins (pip) it was traditionally sold in.

Samut Songkhram, west of Bangkok, is famous for coconut palm sugar, and Phetchaburi for sugar palm (tan) sugar, which goes into many of the province’s famous desserts.

How to cook with it

In curries, add it with the fish sauce near the end, then taste and adjust both together. In pad Thai sauce, it is melted with tamarind and fish sauce. In som tam, it is pounded in the mortar until it dissolves into the dressing before the papaya goes in.

In desserts it is everywhere: in the coconut sauce for khanom krok, in syrups for bananas and pumpkin, and in the caramel-like topping of khanom tuay.

Buying and storing

Palm sugar is sold as soft cakes, round discs or in tubs. For cooking, choose pale, soft sugar that you can dent with a fingernail. Very hard, dark blocks are usually older or mixed with cane sugar. Keep it in an airtight container in a cool place; if it hardens, microwave it for a few seconds or grate it.

Preparing it

Chop soft palm sugar finely with a heavy knife, or shave it with a peeler. For sauces and dressings, melt it with a tablespoon of water over low heat so it dissolves evenly.

Substitutes

Light brown sugar or muscovado, used at about three-quarters of the amount. Coconut sugar from health-food shops is related but drier and less caramel-like; it works in a pinch.

Cook’s tip

Taste a curry before and after adding palm sugar. The difference is not sweetness but balance: the salt and heat come into focus.