Processed
Thai Palm Sugar
S tier
Thai palm sugar (nam tan pip) is a soft, fudgy paste or disc from coconut or sugar-palm sap, sold in tubs and pucks for curries, nam prik, and sweets. It is milder and more butterscotch than a hard Javanese gula, and it melts into a coconut curry without a fight. The best tubs are tan and floral, not acrid. It is not white sugar and it is not a dry granule. A rock-hard puck may be older or more fully dried; grate or steam it. Cheap tubs cut with white sugar taste hollow. Use it where a Thai recipe says palm sugar and you will understand why the sauce is round instead of sharp-sweet.
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History
Tai kitchens boiled palm sap into the soft sugar that seasons curry pastes and desserts.
Tinned and tubbed nam tan pip made palm sugar a national grocery item.
Thai restaurants abroad specified soft palm sugar rather than brown cane sugar.
Export tubs of Thai palm sugar became a standard Western Asian-aisle item.