The Sweet
Sweetness is an important part of Thai cuisine because it is used to balance the salty, acidic, and spicy elements of our dishes. Many Thai restaurants overseas overly sweeten their foods in the attempt to please the Western palate, so don’t use that as a guide. Your Thai food should never be cloyingly sweet!
PALM SUGAR | Nam this peep Piper sugar
Palm sugar is the traditional Thai sweetener, used before granulated sugar became available. To be clear, nowadays we use good old white granulated sugar A LOT in Thai cuisine. So don’t feel like you always need to use palm sugar, especially in recipes where it is used in small amounts. But there are times when the flavour of palm sugar is important to the dish.
Palm sugar is made by reducing and caramelizing the nectar from the flowers of either the coconut palm or the toddy palm. It has a gorgeous butterscotch flavor that is tasty enough to be candy. “Coconut sugar” is a type of palm sugar, but granulated coconut sugar that’s sold in non-Asian stores undergo different processing and does not taste the same as Thai palm sugar.
Palm sugar from different countries also don’t taste the same as Thai palm sugar due to different processing, so use palm sugar from Thailand to ensure the right flavour. For a palm sugar deep dive, see my ultimate guide to palm sugar.
If your palm sugar comes in a solid puck, shave it with a large chef’s knife, then finely chop the shavings. If your palm sugar comes in a tub and is a soft paste, you can simply spoon it out. If your soft palm sugar has hardened, heat it up in the microwave briefly to soften, and then spoon it out while still warm.
Measuring palm sugar for my recipes: My recipes are tested using solid pucks of palm sugar that have been finely chopped and then tightly packed into measuring spoons. One tablespoon of finely chopped, packed palm sugar weighs about 12-13 g, so if using soft paste type palm sugar, use the weight measurement as it t packs a measuring spoon more fully than chopped palm sugar.
Note: All palm sugar sold outside Thailand is mixed with granulated sugar, so the key is to find one that has the least amount of granulated sugar added because it’ll have the most flavour. The only way to know is to taste, unfortunately, the labels will usually claim it is 100% palm sugar (100% not true) or it won’t indicate the ratio.
