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EveryCow

Milk sweets

Khoa

Milk cooked down in an iron pan to a crumbly or soft paste: the base of barfi, peda and gulab jamun.

Khoa, also called mawa, is milk reduced in a wide, shallow iron pan over a steady fire, stirred and scraped without pause until almost all its water has gone. What remains is a pale paste of milk solids. It is not eaten alone but is the foundation of a great many North Indian sweets, from barfi and peda to gulab jamun and gajar ka halwa.

What goes in

Whole milk: 71%71%Iron karahi: 14%14%Steady fire: 14%14%3parts
  • Whole milk1071%, Cooked down to roughly a fifth of its weight.
  • Iron karahi214%, Wide and shallow for fast evaporation.
  • Steady fire214%, Hot enough to boil, low enough not to scorch.

Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each input's share of the product.

Made step by step

Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house and herd to herd; this is one traditional way, in outline.

  1. Step 1: Boil Bring the milk to the boil in a wide iron pan.
  2. Step 2: Cook Keep it bubbling, stirring and scraping the base and sides without stopping.
  3. Step 3: Cook Fold the skin and scrapings back in as the milk thickens.
  4. Step 4: Cook Stop when the paste leaves the sides of the pan and gathers in a mass.
  5. Step 5: Shape Cool it and press it into blocks or roll it into a log.
  6. Whole milk: 71%71%Iron karahi: 14%14%Steady fire: 14%14%
    Finished Khoa, by share.

Three kinds

Halwais, the professional sweet makers, sort khoa by how far it is cooked. Batti is the firmest, rolled into blocks for grating into sweets. Chikna is smooth and a little sticky, used for gulab jamun. Dhap is the softest and moistest, used in some halwas. The same milk gives different results depending on its fat, and buffalo milk gives more khoa than cow milk.

The khoa market

In many North Indian towns khoa is sold wholesale before dawn in its own market, in blocks wrapped in cloth or leaves, to halwais who make the day's sweets. Demand peaks before Diwali, Holi and Raksha Bandhan. Because so much is needed so quickly, food safety officers inspect khoa markets before the festivals, and many families prefer to make their own or buy from a trusted shop.

Where it is used

Barfi and pedaGulab jamunFestival sweets

The breeds behind it

HarianaBreed of the Ganga and Yamuna plains.SahiwalHeavy-milking zebu of the Punjab.GirRich milk of the Saurashtra dairy country.

Also part of it, and being written: Mewati cattle (Kept in the Braj sweet country around Mathura.).

More on EveryCow

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Sources and further reading

About this page

Original text and drawings by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and dairy makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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