welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen we're not doing a recipe today
per se we're doing what i would call
more of a background technique i've got
a couple of recipes coming up where i'm
going to be using maple sugar so i'm
going to make some maple sugar and it's
also at about that time in the year
where
we're just starting to drill and tap our
trees in the backyard to make more maple
syrup so what i've got here is a liter
of last year's maple syrup and i'm just
going to pour it into
this pot
and i've got the temperature sort of
medium high
almost high what i want to do is bring
this
maple syrup to a boil and then bring it
up to
somewhere between 260 and 265 degrees a
lot of people say that the sweet spot
for this is 262
degrees fahrenheit so i've got a really
good
instant read thermometer i'm going to
put that in
and keep an eye on it and it's going to
bubble it's going to boil it's going to
try to boil over
just
whatever i did last time it was set to
128 so
let's set that correctly it's going to
try to boil over
and you don't want it to boil over so
what i've seen a lot of people do is
sort of spread a little bit of butter
around the edge of their pot
that keeps it from boiling over it
reaches that point and then it bubbles
down other people just put a wooden
spoon across the top that stops it from
boiling over whatever works for you
i think with this pot i'm just going to
give it a go and see what happens
so i've set my thermometer to go off on
an alarm at 262 degrees fahrenheit and
now we just watch
just watch that pot carefully and we're
going to get the
last little bit of maple syrup out of
this jug
and get it into the pot
even though it just flows out of trees
here and i use it like there's no
tomorrow and love this stuff
and pretty much get it for the cost of a
little bit of firewood and propane
it is still very precious and i don't
want to waste any
so get everything i can out of that
bottle
and maple sugar is one of those things
that you can use in a lot of your baking
you can use it one to one
in any recipe where you would put in
regular white sugar put in the same
amount of maple sugar and i understand
that for a lot of people this
would be an extremely costly exercise
i am
unbelievably fortunate
to have enough maple trees in my
backyard
that i can that i can tap and make every
year and also have family that also tap
their trees and share their maple syrup
i i really do understand how fortunate i
am in that aspect but once you can try
this
you'll always want to have it on hand
you really will
okay there we are we are boiling
and just keep a close eye on it
don't let it boil over
now i know the mantra never stir a sugar
syrup because it will crystallize
the whole purpose of what we're doing
here today
is to crystallize this sugar drive off
enough water bring it up to enough a
high enough temperature that we're going
to be able to crystallize the sugar
whole purpose so don't worry about
stirring it if what you have to do is
stir it to keep it from boiling over
stir it to keep it from boiling over it
also keeps you from walking away
and letting it go too far we're already
up to 220 degrees fahrenheit
so watch it closely don't walk away
don't let it boil over because it will
make a horrible mess
stir it if you need to
and i kind of prefer the stir method to
the butter method
that's just me i'm you know why add a
little bit of butter into it if you
don't have to
okay i'm really controlling the
temperature at this point
because we're reaching we're sort of
bouncing around there we go 262
i don't want to burn it i don't want to
take it too far
okay so i've lifted the probe off the
bottom of the pot so i can get a more
accurate temperature
and we're hovering in that 262
263 degree mark
there we go 264. i'm going to say this
is done so i'm going to pull it off the
heat
sit it over here
take the temperature probe
put it somewhere that it's not going to
get maple sugar everywhere and then the
same
with the wooden spoon now you can stir
this with a wooden spoon
if you have a mixer i would suggest
using the mixer and even if you're using
a mixture take out one
of these and just use one of the of the
beater blades
and
just beat it
[Music]
and so what you end up with is a pot of
crumbly sugar
and you'll get some big bits and you'll
get some fine bits
resist the temptation to pop that in
your mouth
it'll taste amazing but it will burn
your mouth at the same time so don't do
it
learn from experience
and at this point now i'm going to sift
it
so i've just got a sheet with a little
bit of parchment paper on it and a sieve
i'll just pour a little bit in
and
sift out the sugar
and so these rocks i mean you could try
to force them through the sieve
doesn't work very well so i just put
them in a food processor
and whiz them down to a nice fine grind
and then pass them through the sieve
again a second time
now one of the things i will do is
take all of the bigger chunks and lay
them out into a pan
just to let them cool because sometimes
if you put them into well anytime you
put them into the food processor and
it's too hot
it won't grind as nicely
and you'll notice that it gets really
sticky and you don't want that to happen
and that's kind of why i'm also putting
it out the really fine stuff on this
tray so that it cools and it doesn't
stick together and you get that fine
granulation
so this is just a matter of
sifting and grinding and sifting and
grinding and sifting and grinding and
going back and forth until you get it
all to sort of the fine grind that you
want it to be
or the size of kernel that you want it
to be
and i will go through and
pick out some of the bigger kernels
and keep them in a separate little bowl
and use them to sweeten my tea which is
really nice so i'll just keep sifting
and grinding
and then we'll deal with what's left in
the pot
now for what's left in the pot you're
going to have
quite a bit of sugar stuck to the inside
of your pot
don't let it go to waste what i do is
and there's no there's no tried and true
formula for this it's all guesswork what
i do is i put it back on the heat
with
somewhere between a cup cup and a half
two cups of water
and i just bring this to a low simmer
with the lid on
give it a stir every once in a while
with a wooden spoon to redissolve that
maple sugar back into a liquid
and then i reduce it just a little bit
i'll put this into a bottle and i'll
hang on to it and i'll use it in
cocktails
as a maple flavored
cocktail syrup
or you could also use it for hot totties
you could use it to
sweeten lemonade limeade works really
well in those that sort of subtle hint
of maple flavor in the background of a
lemonade is absolutely fantastic
the point is don't let it go to waste
it's there use it use every last little
bit of it so this
is on the tray now
and every once in a while i just run my
fingers through it
break it up make sure that it's not
clumping and sticking together you don't
want to put it into a jar
until it's fully cooled because it will
turn into a solid block of sugar and if
you've ever had a solid block of brown
sugar in your pantry you know it's not a
great thing to have
uh
and that's it that's all there is to it
there's really not
anything hard about making
maple sugar
other than the cleanup your kitchen does
get
really sticky with sugar
everywhere
now i did um
this is the liquid that i put back into
the pot
i did concentrate it down i kept tasting
it until i kind of got to a point that i
thought okay that
is like a simple syrup it's the right
sort of sweetness and the right amount
of liquid to use in cocktails or coffee
or tea or any sort of beverage like that
this is
the maple sugar and we started it with a
liter and we ended up with
1200 milliliters
by volume
of the of the sugar so you get a little
bit more sugar than you started with but
that's because there's more air
incorporated in this now over the next
couple of weeks you're going to see me
use this in a bunch of recipes
i've got some things picked out that use
maple sugar so stand by and and take a
look at those thanks for stopping by see
you again soon
you