Sugarcane can be made into juice freshly at home. All you need is a mighty knife and blender. You can make sugarcane juice with lemon or ginger for a refreshing drink.
At India, sugarcane juice is very common, but mostly the vending machines those days kept in roadsides will be flooded with flies, which stops us from having the drink. Whenever there is a chance to see hygienic sugarcane juice shop, we have had this refreshing drink and always loved it. There are two kinds the purple one and the green one. South India mostly has purple ones and mom says it is the best, sweet and have a sweet flavour too.

We buy sugarcane for pongal, apart from that, never buy it. Sugarcane and pongal brings lots of childhood memories. A couple of whole sugarcanes will be bought by my dad or grandpa during pongal. After pongal celebrations, in the evening, using iron arival (The aruval (Tamil: அரிவாள்) is a type of billhook from India, Source: Wikipedia), dad cuts into smaller logs. We see neighbourhood kids eating as such by peeling the skin using their teeth itself, but we were totally lazy kids, so mom or dad slices off the skin and cut into small pieces. Both myself and my brother will sit in the backyard, with a newspaper spread before us, over which we will be asked to chew and spit the fibrous remain. Next day, it will be dry and will be either disposed or burnt. We develop small mouth ulcers too after eating sugarcane. My mom dad used to say we should have strong enough teeths to use our teeths to peel and chew the sugar cane as such.

But now, I hardly buy sugarcane for pongal though we get sugarcane at little India. This year, for pongal celebration, my entire family (in-laws) came here to Singapore to celebrate pongal together as I have not been there in India for the celebration after my marriage.
I hope by now you would have guessed the reason for not posting anything off late, yes, I was super busy with house full of guests. So I could not spend time at all for my blog with everyone at home. I just concentrated with my work wholeheartedly there 😊.
So after they all went back to India, here I am with a simple post with the leftover sugarcane (Karumbu). Don’t be afraid like I was, just cut into small pieces and use blender to make fresh karumbu juice.

How to make sugarcane juice:

1. Cut the sugarcane into roughly 5 inch pieces. Peel off the skin by inserting the knife along the edge holding vertically.



2. Further, cut down into thin strips and cut into smaller sticks. Place these strips in blender in small batches with little water.



3. Blend well. Transfer to a large metal strainer over a bowl.



4. Squeeze off the juice with hands. Filter and mix sugar as needed. Enjoy.

Enjoy as such or add a squirt of lemon. If you want just a subtle flavour of lemon and not tanginess, add a slice of lemon into the juice and have it.