Myeik Cashew Brittle
Golden palm-sugar brittle packed with toasted Tanintharyi cashews and a pinch of salt — Myeik's crackling market sweet, made honestly in one pot.
By Burmese Cookbook Kitchen · July 9, 2026
တနင်္သာရီ TanintharyiOpening & Diaspora, 1988–present
၇- Prep
- 10 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Serves
- 12
- Level
- Intermediate
Myeik's markets sell the sea — dried prawns, fish cakes, seaweed by the sack — but walk the sweet stalls and you meet the other Tanintharyi crop: cashews, whole and golden, set in slabs of dark palm-sugar glass. Visitors carry the brittle home the way they carry laphet from the Shan hills; it travels well, snaps loudly, and tastes unmistakably of where it came from.
We label the era honestly. Jaggery-and-nut brittle is an old, unremarkable pleasure across Myanmar — the peanut version has been sold beside toddy palms upcountry for generations. The cashew tree, though, is a colonial-era arrival to Asia's coasts, and Tanintharyi's orchards became serious business only in recent decades, when the deep south turned into the country's cashew belt. The cashew brittle of Myeik, as a named market sweet, is a modern invention built from two much older habits. No legend required; economics did the cooking.
At home it is a one-pot candy with two moments of truth. The cashews must be toasted and kept warm — cold nuts seize the syrup into a lumpy fossil. And the syrup must reach a true snap, which with jaggery you cannot judge by color; the pot starts dark and stays dark, so the cold-water drop test is law. Get the snap right, spread it thin, and you have made the argument for why the south keeps its best nuts at home.
Jaggery lies about its color — it starts dark, so your eyes are useless. A drop in cold water is the only honest test: a bendy thread is too soon, a clean snap is done.
မီးဖိုချောင်စကား · A word from the kitchen
Ingredientsပါဝင်ပစ္စည်း
Serves 12
Tap to check off as you gather
For the brittle
- cashews — raw and whole; halves work but whole nuts are the Myeik signature
- palm sugar (jaggery) — chopped small so it melts before it scorches
- water
- sea salt
- peanut oil — for the tray, the spatula, and the knife — sugar sticks to everything else
- sesame seeds — optional, toasted, scattered over the top before it sets
Methodချက်နည်း
Tap a numeral as you finish each step
Step 1: Toast the cashews
Spread the cashews on a tray and toast at 150°C for 12 to 15 minutes, shaking once, until pale gold and fragrant — or toss them patiently in a dry pan. Raw cashews turn leathery inside brittle; toasted ones stay crisp and taste twice as loud. Keep them warm in a low oven: cold nuts seize hot syrup before you can spread it.
Step 2: Set your stage
Oil a baking tray (or line it with parchment and oil that), oil a metal spatula, and oil a heavy knife. Set everything within arm's reach of the stove, warm nuts included. Once the sugar is ready you have perhaps a minute of working time, and brittle punishes anyone who goes hunting for a spatula mid-pour.
Step 3: Melt the jaggery
Stir the jaggery and water in a heavy pan over low heat until fully melted, then pour it through a sieve and return it to the clean pan. Palm sugar comes with palm — fibers, grit, the odd bark fleck — and straining now is the difference between glassy brittle and sandy.
Step 4: Cook to the snap
Boil the syrup over medium heat without stirring, swirling the pan now and then, for 8 to 12 minutes. Test early and often: drip a little into a bowl of cold water. When the drop hardens into a bead that snaps clean between your fingers — around 150°C on a thermometer — it is done. Softer and the brittle will chew and stick; further and jaggery's caramel tips into bitterness fast.
Step 5: Stir in the nuts and pour
Off the heat, quickly stir in the warm cashews, the salt, and pour the mass onto the oiled tray. Press and spread it with the oiled spatula to roughly a single-nut thickness — thin is the whole game; thick brittle is dentistry. Scatter the sesame over now if using, while the surface is still tacky.
Step 6: Score, snap, and store
After 2 to 3 minutes, while the sheet is set but still warm, press the oiled knife straight down to score bars or diamonds. Cool completely — 20 minutes — then snap along the lines. Store airtight immediately with as little air as possible; humidity is brittle's only enemy, and on the coast it wins within a day if you let it.
ခွက်ယောက် · The tools
Equipment
Fine sieve / muslin
စစ်ခွက်For straining tamarind, pressing broth clear, and sifting flours — line it with muslin for the cleanest pour.
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ဟင်းစုံ · Set the table
A Burmese meal is a spread
A mont wants a cup of something beside it:
How a Burmese meal is built →Questions from the kitchen
Can I use white sugar instead of jaggery?
Yes — 200 g white sugar with the same water makes a cleaner, blonder, better-behaved brittle. What you lose is the point: jaggery's smoky, almost coffee-dark caramel is what makes this taste of a Burmese market rather than a candy aisle. Half white sugar, half jaggery is a fair truce for a first attempt.
Can I use roasted salted cashews from a tin?
You can. Skip the toasting step, warm them briefly so they do not chill the syrup, and leave out the added salt entirely — tinned nuts carry more than this recipe calls for.
My brittle turned sticky overnight. What happened?
Either the syrup never reached the snap stage, or the air got to it — jaggery is hygroscopic and drinks humidity greedily. If it is soft throughout, break it up, remelt it gently in the pan, and cook it further. If it merely turned tacky on the surface, seal it in a truly airtight jar with a dry rice sachet and it will hold the line.
Is peanut brittle the same thing?
It is the same technique and the older, upcountry standard — jaggery and peanuts, sold beside every dry-zone toddy palm. The cashew version is the southern flex: where Tanintharyi grows the country's cashews, the market stalls load the good nut in and charge accordingly.
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