Bar: Syrups: Orange, Ginger, Grenadine - feralcoder/shared GitHub Wiki
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Orange and Ginger Syrups
These are simple syrups infused with rind or root.
Orange Syrup
Use thick-rind oranges which can shed a lot of oil. Naval oranges work well, but you should scratch-sniff-test before you buy.
Peel the rinds off the oranges. If there is a thick pith, you should probably use a peeler. If you don't want any bitter in your syrup, you should peel thin slices and minimize the pith.
Optionally you can add some juice to the syrup. This changes the taste profile of the rind syrup considerably.
My ideal ratios:
- 4 cups water
- 4 cups sugar for water
- 30 medium-sized oranges
Optional:
- 1 cup clarified juice (from oranges, see below)
- 1 cup sugar for juice
Heat water to dissolve sugar. Peel all oranges, with or without pith. Put half the peels into the hot syrup and steep on low heat for 20 minutes. Don't boil, and don't do it too long, or you will drive off the best oils. Let peels sit in the cooling pan for another hour or two. Strain and toss.
Put remaining peels into jars, pour syrup into jars, cap, and refrigerate.
Optional - Add Clarified Juice Syrup
While the first peel batch is steeping, juice a couple oranges, then let the juice sit. Allow the solids to settle, and pour off 1 cup of clarified juice. Or use a filter cone. Mix 1 cup sugar in clarified juice. Add to syrup.
Ginger Syrup
My ideal ratios:
- 4 cups water
- 4 cups sugar
- 1 lb ginger
Divide the ginger in half: bigger knobs vs miscellaneous. Peel and slice the big knobs, about 1/8" thick. Grate the smaller stuff into stringy mash.
Heat water to dissolve sugar. Dump the mashed ginger into hot syrup. Steep on low heat for 30 minutes. Don't boil. Remove from heat, let cool, strain. Squeeze out remaining syrup from mash, toss the mash. Put remaining ginger slices into jars, pour syrup into jars, cap, and refrigerate.
Grenadine
Can be as simple as pomegranate juice and sugar. Fresh juice tastes much better than, eg, Pom Wonderful (from concentrate). Optionally, some orange flower water and pomegranate molasses add a lot of dimension.
- 1 cup pomegranate juice
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 tsp Orange Flower Water
- 2 tsp Pomegranate Molasses
Dissolve sugar into juice. You may heat to accelerate this - but I don't. You may boil off water to thicken - use a very wide pan for fastest effect. Fast is important, the taste degrades quickly. Add molasses after any thickening - the water will boil off easier pre-thickening. Add orange flower water last. Jar and refrigerate.
Make Them Shelf Stable
A 1:1 sugar-water syrup (AKA "simple") is not shelf stable. Add some alcohol and it is. The same principles can stabilize infused or juice syrups. The simple story: Add 2 tbsp 150 proof grain alcohol per cup syrup.
For details and equations: Bar: Stabilizing Syrups