Sweetener · Nile Dates
Asal Balah (Dongola Date Syrup)
🌴
Photo coming soon
Made from prized local varieties like gondela and barakawi, the syrup is boiled down twice — the pulp strained and re-boiled a second time — to concentrate its sweetness before it's ready to eat.
Dongola's date palms, grown along the Nile's fertile northern banks, produce a syrup made by slow-boiling ripe dates, straining the pulp, then reducing the liquid again into a thick, dark syrup. It's drizzled over gurasa or kisra as an everyday sweetener.
Why it's made this way: The Dongola Reach is one of Sudan's most productive date-growing stretches of the Nile, and turning surplus dates into a shelf-stable syrup has long let Nubian farmers store the harvest's sweetness well past the short date season.
More from Sudan
Sudanese Coffee (Gahwa)
Ful Medames
Tamiya
Gurasa (Sudanese Flatbread)
Karkadé (Hibiscus Tea)
Zalabiya (Sudanese Fried Dough)
Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below.
Photo credits.