Jaggery is the product basically prepared from boiling the sugar cane juice

It is not widely known in western countries since it is rarely prepared there. It is predominantly made in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. Besides tasting very good, it has many health benefits. Now, let’s explore a bit more about this colorful and tasty food!

In Most of the villages Jaggery will be prepared by the farmers. Usually they will own the preparation materials needed. Some times they will rent the crusher for few months and start doing the jaggery preparation process.  Farmers use 2 – 3 big hard iron bowls (Kadai), sugarcane, crusher (Sugar cane juice extracting machine), fire system to boil the sugar cane juice, molds to pour the prepared jaggury to bring it to a specific shape (if needed)

The following steps are the process to prepare jaggery

• Step 1- Cutting sugar cane from fields
• Step 2-  Feeding the sugarcane crusher to extract juice .
• Step 3- Boil the sugarcane juice to bring to a semisolid state.
• Step 4- Pour the jaggery in specific molds [OR] Prepare a round shape or make a powder .
• Step 5- Natural cooling and jaggery will be ready

Area preparation for jaggery plant :

In the farm farmers will prepare the flat surface to dry the sugarcane pulp. In shady region they will dig soil and prepare a fire system.They will keep the Iron/steel big bowels on top of the pit. They will keep a provision to remove the ash from the Fire system and they will make an arrangement to supply the sugarcane dry pulp for the burning process.

To avoid the heat wastage few of the farmers will extend the pit for another one or two steel bowls. So that upcoming sugarcane juice can be heated to certain temperature. With this wee can save lot of time in jaggery preparation. Using three bowels is the best technique to utilize the heat

You can see that in the below picture Three bowls are used. You can also observe arrangements are made to throw the dry sugarcane pulp

Below Pit will contain the ash powder. Extra ash can be cleared from the pit.

Bring Sugar cane from fields:

First, cut the sugar cane from the farm according to the requirement remove its top and bottom part. Peal off the leaves and usually these will be brought to jaggery preparation plant by using bullock cart

Extract the juice from sugarcane:

Start the juice extracting machine put two or three canes into the crusher machine which will squeeze and separate the juice and sugar cane pulp. Sugar cane pulp will be used as a fire wood

Supply the Sugarcane juice to the bowls:

Put the juice into the pre-washed iron bowls put fire and start to stir it.

Remove the waste from the bowl:

While stirring some residue will start floating on top the juice. Continuously removes this black content. Final product of Jaggury will be in good color if you remove this black residue otherwise Jaggery will come in black color.

Boil Sugarcane juice:

Once you remove black content, Sugar cane juice boils for some more time until it becomes thick.  Before boiling of juice some thick liquid come that is called as KAKVI the sweeten form of liquid. If we want this we can remove the amount which we need. Continue the boiling then we will get a semi-liquid state of juice then stop boiling.

Reduce the flame and prepare for the last step:

Lift the semisolid Jaggery carefully with the help of wooden sticks and pour into the another container where this need to be steered  for some time

Cooling and Steering :

Allow the liquid to be naturally cooled and steer the liquid when needed. Keep the Jaggery  for 30 to 50 min so that it will come to the normal temperature. Here in this below picture Jaggery powder was prepared.

So our Jaggary is ready 🙂

Calculations:

• Mass of sugarcane juice produced is about 65% of the sugarcane crushed
• Mass of floating residue (molasses) produced is 10.25 g/kg of sugarcane juice

Overall Process:

We took all these photos in below farmer sugarcane plant. His name is Srinivasa Reddy

The health importance of Jaggery: