Khand: what unrefined sugar keeps that white sugar loses

Most sugar on the shelf has been refined to a single thing: clean, white, uniform sweetness. Khand takes the same cane juice and stops well before that point, which is exactly why it tastes of more.

What refining removes

To make white sugar, cane juice is clarified, crystallised and spun in a centrifuge to throw off the molasses, then often bleached. Each step lightens the colour and strips the flavour until what is left is sweetness and very little else.

What khand keeps

Khand is slow-cooked and left partly unrefined, so it holds on to some of the molasses, its natural warm colour and the minerals that come with it. The result is a softer, golden sugar with a faint caramel, almost toffee, character.

• Colour: a natural warm gold, not bleached white.
• Flavour: a gentle molasses note instead of flat sweetness.
• Process: slow-cooked and partly unrefined, not centrifuged and bleached.

Use it anywhere you would use sugar, in chai, in kheer, in baking, and it quietly adds a depth that plain white sugar cannot.