If brown sugar is not the same thing as German brauner Zucker, what is it?
Hey everyone, I’m Dana and you’re watching Wanted Adventure Living Abroad.
In this video I’m going a little bit more into the topic that Stefan and I very, very
briefly brought up in the video that we put out a few weeks ago,
"3 Things I Learned Dating an Ausländer." Up in there. You can see it.
In that video Stefan mentioned the cultural and language mix up that we had with American
brown sugar versus German brauner Zucker. What is actually the difference?
Let’s start with the German stuff.
This here is what is labelled brauner Zucker at the store and in the little sugar packets
at cafes here in Germany. Brauner Zucker.
In the U.S. I’ve seen sugar that looks like this at stores and sometimes available in
cafes as well, and I’ve always referred to this kind of sugar as raw sugar.
So granulated white sugar and in the U.S. this is called raw sugar.
But back in the day when Stefan and I had that misunderstanding, when I wanted to bake
something with an American recipe and I asked Stefan to bring home some brown sugar from
the store, I was not talking about this kind of sugar.
I was talking about this kind of sugar.
In the U.S. brown sugar is granulated white sugar mixed with molasses.
And you can have light brown sugar or dark brown sugar depending on how much molasses
is mixed in there.
Brown sugar like this is slightly moist and kind of sticky because of the molasses that
is mixed in there.
But so then, if American brown sugar is simply granulated sugar mixed with molasses,
then when I couldn’t find brown sugar in the store in Germany, why didn’t I simply buy
molasses and mix my own with granulated sugar?
Well for one, when that misunderstanding first came up, I didn’t actually realize that
American brown sugar was simply granulated sugar mixed with molasses.
I had always just bought brown sugar at the store because the recipe called for brown sugar.
But I never actually realized that it was in fact molasses and granulated sugar.
But then once I couldn’t find it here in Germany I did look that up and I learned
that that was the case, but then I couldn’t find molasses at the store in Germany either.
I did find something at the store called Zuckerrübensirup,
which looks quite a lot like molasses,
and so I used the German Zuckerrübensirup with granulated sugar in my recipes for a while
instead of brown sugar, but it just didn’t quite taste right.
The cookies that I baked with the Zuckerrübensirup, for example, came out tasting good, but it
didn’t have the exact right flavor that I was used to.
Which I have since learned is because Zuckerrübensirup and molasses, even though they kind of look similar,
they aren't actually the same thing,
so it would make sense that the end product - the cookies
or whatever else I was making - wouldn't taste the same either.
The Zuckerrübensirup is lighter in color than the molasses, and it seems to be a little
bit runnier, a little bit more liquidy than the molasses.
So when I do this I can see a lot more of the Zuckerrübensirup coming down.
And I'm going to stop now because I don't want to drip either of these onto the floor.
So what am I using now in Germany?
Well eventually I just started ordering my American brown sugar online.
Since then, though, I have actually started to see molasses popping up and becoming available
in some stores in Germany.
So my question for you is: Have you ever had a food mix-up from one language to another?
Please let us know in the comments below.
Thanks so much for watching. Until next time, auf Wiedersehen!
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