Street Drink · Press-Crushed
Asab (Sugarcane Juice)
Photo: Gehad Gallo / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
The juice is pressed to order in a hand-fed roller press right in front of the customer — the drink starts losing its flavor within minutes, so nothing is made ahead of time.
Whole sugarcane stalks are fed through a hand-cranked or motorized roller press, and the sweet green juice runs straight into a glass. Cairo's asab stands, easy to spot by their piles of stripped cane, press it fresh for every single customer, sometimes with a wedge of lime or mint stirred in.
Why it's made this way: Sugarcane has been grown along the Nile for centuries, and juicing it street-side turned an agricultural staple of Upper Egypt into one of Cairo's most common hot-weather drinks.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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