Panakam also known as Panagam or Panaka is a traditional South Indian cooling beverage primarily made from jaggery, water, and aromatic spices. It is made during Sri Rama Navami.
It is believed that Lord Rama likes this beverage. It acts as the coolant during hot summer. Rama Navami falls in the months of March or April, it is begging of the summer, slowly the climate heats up and the temperatures increases.
The ingredients present in panakam are said to be helpful in keeping the body cool. Not only keeping the body cool it helps as a digestion aid too. Panakam acts as a natural Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS).
Not only during Rama Navami Panakam takes it’s place in every festival in our household. I offer panakam and vadapappu on all festival days to deity. It become a habit we must offer both panakm and vadapappu. Preparation of this one is also very easy and no cook recipe.
Key ingredients in Panakam:
- Jaggery: Provides an instant energy boost and is rich in iron and potassium.
- Dry Ginger & Pepper: These warm spices stimulate digestion, reduce bloating, and have antimicrobial properties.
- Lemon: Detoxifies the liver and provides Vitamin C.
- Cardamom: Acts as a natural body coolant and aids in producing digestive juices.
Steps in making Panakam:
There is not much of specific step in making panakam. But we need to follow certain of them to make it easy.
Soaking Jaggery: Soak jaggery for at least half an hour to 1 hour to get the jaggery melt properly in water.
Filter: Filtering helps in removing impurities present in jaggery. To avoid small particles of spices while drinking panakam filtering is helpful.
Flavours: Stir in the lemon juice, ginger powder, cardamom, and pepper.
Spices: Add spices like dry ginger powder, black pepper powder, cardamom powder gives a nice spicy taste as well as they help in digestion and reducing bloating.
Lemon Juice: Add 1 or 2 tbsp of lemon juice for refreshing flavour.
Finish: In the last add tulasi leaves, but it is purely optional, I add them while offering to the deity.
The beauty of Panakam lies in its simplicity; it requires no cooking and uses only a few powerhouse ingredients.
Panakam Recipe | Panakam for Sri Rama Navami
Ingredients
- 1/2 Cup Jaggery
- 2 ltr Water
- 1 tsp Dry Ginger Powder
- 1 tsp Black Pepper Powder
- 2 or 3 Cardamom
- 2 Leaves Tulsi Leaves
- 1 tbsp Lemon Juice
Instructions
- Soak jaggery in water for about an hour or more.
- Let the jaggery melts completely.
- Once the jaggery melted, filter it if found any impurities.
- Add dry ginger powder, black pepper powder and cardamom powder.
- We can add the readily available powders or we can make fresh powders of them and mix.
- Mix all of them well and add lemon juice.
- Refrigerate panakam for half an hour and serve chilled.
- If offering to the deity, add tulsi leaves and offer.
- Serve chilled panakam whenever feels like.