which_chick (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
which_chick) wrote2019-02-01 11:10 am
which_chick) wrote2019-02-01 11:10 am
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Waiting for it to stop snowing.
So yesterday after the Frozen Pipe Extravaganza, I went (with Brother the Younger) to the Fisher's Country Store which is, indeed, a Country Store and not a Wegman's or a Wise or a Gian Iggle or other conglomerate option. The Country Store has many interesting things. They sell an amazing variety of flours and grains. (They have a website listing the stuff they sell, particularly the bulk foods stuff.) Best place in the county to shop for flours that aren't "white". Excellent selection of whole, cracked, and pre-ground grains. Also they have a fairly comprehensive spice aisle with quite good prices. So yeah, it's a Shopping Destination around here, kind of like The Locker Plant which does really, really good kolbassi or kielbasa or whatever. Garlicky tube meat thing. Good with cabbage products. That stuff.
Sometimes when I am at Fisher's, I see a thing and I do not know what the thing is yet still desire to try the thing. This is not a problem I have with everything. For example, I have never tasted Buffalo-style pickled quail eggs. Not going to taste them, either.
But I was in the aisle at Fishers (looking idly for malt syrup, whatever that is, since it is allegedly an ingredient in the Danish RUGBRĂD that I am currently engaged in making) and I happened upon jars of sorghum syrup. Sorghum is a plant, I'm pretty sure. We don't get syrup from, for example, fish. So it's a plant. I bought some sorghum syrup because (a) I wanted to see what it tasted like and (b) the jar ingredient list was, in its entirety, "sorghum juice". Yeah, I want that.
So I bought it. It's a dark brown syrup product, vaguely similar to molasses. The thing it tastes the absolute most like is, y'know when you're roasting a butternut squash or a sweet potato in the oven and the juice oozes out and caramelizes into a sticky darkish brown thing that is so sugary it strings and hardens like the brittle part of peanut brittle? It tastes like that. Really kind of tasty stuff. I'm a fan. Not sure what to put it on besides English muffins, but yeah. It's pretty good.
Are you sure sorghum is really a plant? Yes. (I looked it up for you and everything.) It's sort of a grass thing. The kind we grow for crops is "Sorghum bicolor" and it is the (quoting from here) "fifth most important cereal crop in the world". Sorghum originally came from Africa and in the US it is primarily used for livestock feed and ethanol. There are assorted varieties, the one for making syrups is "sweet sorghum".
It's apparently a drought tolerant, hardy, fast-growing plant that can be a grain crop, a fodder crop, or a sweetener. The reason we don't use it for making white sugar (instead of sugar cane, which only grows in the far, far south -- Florida, Texas, Louisiana -- or instead of sugar beets -- Minnesota, North Dakota, Iowa, Michigan) is that it doesn't lend itself to becoming crystalline white sugar. Sorghum juice "contains gummy materials, starch, and comparatively large quantities of sugars other than the ordinary sugar of commerce(sucrose), which retard and sometimes prevent crystallization" (source). Rephrasing the science speak, sorghum is not viable as the base material for white refined sugar because it contains too much other stuff. Also, it is fairly time-sensitive in terms of sugar content and quickly converts the sugars into starches if not processed promptly. Sugar beets have a better yield and no time-sensitivity and they grow well in cooler climates (see states listed, above).
Anyway. I had no idea about any of this until I went to Fisher's. Sorghum. Now you know. Still not gonna eat any Buffalo-style pickled quail eggs, though. Also I am proceeding on my Danish rye project without any malt syrup. It'll be fine, I am sure.
Sometimes when I am at Fisher's, I see a thing and I do not know what the thing is yet still desire to try the thing. This is not a problem I have with everything. For example, I have never tasted Buffalo-style pickled quail eggs. Not going to taste them, either.
But I was in the aisle at Fishers (looking idly for malt syrup, whatever that is, since it is allegedly an ingredient in the Danish RUGBRĂD that I am currently engaged in making) and I happened upon jars of sorghum syrup. Sorghum is a plant, I'm pretty sure. We don't get syrup from, for example, fish. So it's a plant. I bought some sorghum syrup because (a) I wanted to see what it tasted like and (b) the jar ingredient list was, in its entirety, "sorghum juice". Yeah, I want that.
So I bought it. It's a dark brown syrup product, vaguely similar to molasses. The thing it tastes the absolute most like is, y'know when you're roasting a butternut squash or a sweet potato in the oven and the juice oozes out and caramelizes into a sticky darkish brown thing that is so sugary it strings and hardens like the brittle part of peanut brittle? It tastes like that. Really kind of tasty stuff. I'm a fan. Not sure what to put it on besides English muffins, but yeah. It's pretty good.
Are you sure sorghum is really a plant? Yes. (I looked it up for you and everything.) It's sort of a grass thing. The kind we grow for crops is "Sorghum bicolor" and it is the (quoting from here) "fifth most important cereal crop in the world". Sorghum originally came from Africa and in the US it is primarily used for livestock feed and ethanol. There are assorted varieties, the one for making syrups is "sweet sorghum".
It's apparently a drought tolerant, hardy, fast-growing plant that can be a grain crop, a fodder crop, or a sweetener. The reason we don't use it for making white sugar (instead of sugar cane, which only grows in the far, far south -- Florida, Texas, Louisiana -- or instead of sugar beets -- Minnesota, North Dakota, Iowa, Michigan) is that it doesn't lend itself to becoming crystalline white sugar. Sorghum juice "contains gummy materials, starch, and comparatively large quantities of sugars other than the ordinary sugar of commerce(sucrose), which retard and sometimes prevent crystallization" (source). Rephrasing the science speak, sorghum is not viable as the base material for white refined sugar because it contains too much other stuff. Also, it is fairly time-sensitive in terms of sugar content and quickly converts the sugars into starches if not processed promptly. Sugar beets have a better yield and no time-sensitivity and they grow well in cooler climates (see states listed, above).
Anyway. I had no idea about any of this until I went to Fisher's. Sorghum. Now you know. Still not gonna eat any Buffalo-style pickled quail eggs, though. Also I am proceeding on my Danish rye project without any malt syrup. It'll be fine, I am sure.