Upon investigation, I learnt that while 70% of the world’s jaggery is produced in India, where it is commonly called “gur,” jaggery is also produced in other parts of South Asia such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka and used as an ingredient in both sweet and savoury dishes in the cuisines of South Asia, Southeast Asia and some parts of the Middle East, too (at this point I’m just hanging my head in shame for taking only 35+ years to discover it).

Jaggery aka panela in Latin America (and now I’m taking to showing off to overcompensate) is referred to as a ‘non-centrifugal sugar’ which is just fancy for traditional, raw, unrefined sugar obtained by evaporating the liquid in sugarcane juice (I’ve detailed the steps below if you’re a fellow nerd and want to know what this entails).