Palm Sugar

palm fruit, mild and juicy

On the way leaving Angkor Wat during the 4th day in Cambodia, we stopped at one of the farm houses along the roadside to buy their local product--palm sugar.

Most families along the roadside produced and sold palm sugar in front of their houses during the dry season when the paddy field was too dry for planting. As soon as we reached a simple stall of a family, a girl immediately cut open a palm fruit to let us enjoy the mild and cooling palm juice as well as the soft and jelly-liked flesh of the fruit! And it tasted so..................nice!

Cambodian kids with palm fruits, male and female flower of the plant

pot used to boil the palm sugar

According to our tour guide Sothik, the juice used to produce the palm fruit is actually from the female blossom of the plant. Almost every farm houses there has a big pot on a stone fireplace which is used to boil and crystalize the palm juice to make into palm sugar. The palm sugar is then packed beautifully into the dried palm leaves for sale, and the palm sugar tastes really awesome, it's a true nature product and it has the taste of the nature too!

palm sugar packed in dried palm leaves

palm sugar