Learning to feed yourself can be one of the most terrifying things. Am I about to give myself food poisoning? If I eat this too often will I end up with scurvy? How can I get the most nutritional bang for my buck? Why does this still taste like ass?
With Ode to My Pantry, learn to navigate a grocery store without having a meltdown in aisle three. Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a queer to cook and stave off malnutrition for another semester.
IT’S SUGAR SHACK SEASON! I just came back from a cabane à sucre where I gorged on crêpes, saucisses, omelettes and pouding chômeur drowned in the brown stuff. As I write this I am quite likely slumped over my desk waiting for the maple sugar to work its way out of my system. If I don’t survive this sugar hangover, I want my family, my girlfriend and my cacti to know I loved them.
Even though the Bank of Canada believes that anything can be maple, there is only one that matters: Acer saccharum, the Sugar Maple. The tree gets its name by being the sweetest tree in the maple forest, making it the golden child for us syrup suckers. Red or Black Maple sap can be converted into pancake dressing, but their low sugar content makes an already laborious process even more annoying. And don’t even touch decorative maples, their milky sap is crap!
During the autumn, wiley plants store all of their precious photosynthesis-derived sugars deep in their roots as if they were 20 foot tall squirrels. This secret snack stash sees them through the start of spring, supplying sustenance until they sprout. The maple run is dependant on two things: warm days and subzero nights. The cells wake up when it’s warm enough, eating their squirreled away snacks and emitting shittons CO2. Much like disgusting college students woken up from a deep slumber, they throw their waste everywhere, causing a building up of gases in the surrounding sapwood. All you need to do is to hammer a spigot into the sapwood to release the pressure and some of that precious sap! Throw down a bucket or an elaborate vacuum pump system and it’s maple time!
At night when it’s back to freezing, the CO2 contracts and the water in the sap freezes, creating suction at the roots. The roots will drink up extra water, replenishing the lost sap and the entire process starts anew! But if it’s too warm to freeze, the suction cycle stops and the maple run will be cut short. Last year’s über fast defrost meant the normal six week collecting season was slashed to two for some regions. Not only were the volumes deplorable, but the quality took a beating too! So if you laughed at the Maple Syrup Heist of 2012, NO SYRUP FOR YOU.
If you did manage to collect a shitton of maple sap, what do you do? Pour it on your pancakes? You could, but you would just have a soggy pancake. Even though maple syrup comes from this “sugary” sap, it only has a scant sugar content of 2-5%.
Maple sap’s nickname is maple water for a reason. Keep in mind this is the sugar content of actual juice, not your newfangled fruit cocktail.
Do you wanna cash in on all of the free sugar water out there? Get your stove ready! It generally takes about 40 parts of maple water to produce one part of syrup, but not all sap is created equal. Jones’ Rule of 86 says if you divide 86 by the sap’s sugar content, you will know exactly how many gallons you need to boil. Most North American brown sugar water only earns the moniker Maple Syrup when it reaches a sugar content of 66% while Vermont and New Hampshire wait for 66.9%. Even though the concentration seems arbitrary, anything lower risks spoilage and anything higher risks crystallization. Play free and easy if you’re making your own, but just remember that if you actually sell brown sugar water, you’re likely to serve up sad pancakes with a side of $10,000 fine.
At its surface, boiling just seems like the easiest way to concentrate the syrup, but it’s actually responsible for a lot of the colour and flavour. In my favourite dance move (the Maillard Reaction), glucose and fructose join a Tegan and Sara-fueled slamdance, ricocheting and colliding with errant amino acids in the watery mix. Once these reducing sugars find an amino acid partner, they get all of sorts of intimate and inappropriate on the dance floor, producing new flavour and colour compounds. The more sugar dance partners available, the darker and more flavourful your syrup will be! Even though maple water contains a shitton of sucrose, it’s just too big to cut a rug! It needs be broken down into the reducing sugars before it can let loose, but luckily that wingman was already invited to the party.
Even though it flows fresh and clear, maple sap brings some bacterial buddies along for the ride. This may make you shudder but those little microbes are little martyrs, creating a bit of a basic brew and splitting the sucrose into workable pieces before they’re nuked in the boiler. Give bacteria enough time and they’ll free enough reducing sugar dance partners for some serious maple flavour and colour. But non breakfast table-friendly flavours will take over if bacteria start fermenting instead. Bacteria can be kept at bay by cleaning the collection equipment and boiling the brew ASAP.
Good thing the ability to draw a Canadian flag isn’t a citizenship requirement.
When it comes to grading your sweet syrup, everyone has a different system. Canada (red) likes numbers and the USDA (black) prefers alphabetical grades whereas Vermont (brackets) is a special little flower that gets its own system. In a similar vein to tequila, don’t be fooled by what marketers tell you. Even though N0.1/Fancy/Grade A Light Amber gets all of the accolades, it’s not the one that lives in my fridge. If you aren’t a fan of maple, yet were somehow scammed into eating it, reach for the lighter grades. But, grab the dark stuff if maple syrup warms your heart and soul. These syrups come have a richer maple/caramel flavour and are viscous enough to stay on your pancake for a few extra seconds. As a bonus, they tend to be a bit cheaper than the rarer Grade As, making economic and gastronomic sense.
Even though maple syrup’s high sugar content would make you think it’s a bacterial and fungal wasteland, think again! Does it go bad? Slowly but surely. Store your syrup in a resealable jar (I’m a fan of a sanitized toggle beer bottle) and shove that sucker in the fridge. If you see a bunch of sugar crystals forming, put the entire thing into a hot water bath until the crystals melt. If you happen to see a mold raft forming, gently skim it off or strain the entire mess through cheese cloth or panty hose.
If you hoarded enough of the good stuff to survive the next maple drought, show off your syrup! Pour it on your pancakes! Flavour your fowl! Perk up your pommes! Turn on your tempeh! Dress up your dessert! Or just get fucking drunk with it. Since I probably drank a gallon, I won’t be able to tolerate much more this month but you can tell me how you like it.
We had two sugar maple trees on my property growing up, and the best thing is when sugar icicles form on the branches in the early spring. We also used to scoop [clean] snow into bowls and pour maple syrup on it and eat it, yum.
Like in Little House on the Prairie!?
I always wanted to do that, but my parents said the snow was too dirty…
I always wanted to do that but sadly lived in England. Instead I had my mum do my very long hair in two plaits and make me a bonnet, which I wore frequesntly, even though I was like 9. I also had a flowery dress with a ruffled apron to go over the top.
Born in the wrong century.
we were at a sugar shack last week, yeah for maple syrup! and that maple syrup heist was no joke, an international incident!
I’ve never actually tried to do it at home but I love when you can get maple syrup heated up, poured on snow and then rolled onto a stick.
Tire d’érable! I never really know how to eat it properly. I’ll start licking it like a lollypop, but then it’ll immediately morph into a melting mess. So generally I just end up shoving it in my face and pretending I still look like a grownup.
omg THANK YOU. this was informative and delicious.
also also this is in my top ten reasons why i am a climate activist: SAVE THE MAPLE HARVEST
I think I need to make that into a bike sticker
I have ALWAYS wanted to know all of the maple facts! I’m not even kidding. You rock, this post was awesome.
I’ve only read like 2.3 sentences and I needed to comment that maple syrup is the best thing ever. Like, THE BEST.
I lived in Maine for a hot minute, and Maple Sunday was the one Sunday of the year we didn’t go to church. So obviously, it was my favorite day and I looked forward to it all year.
In kindergarten, our class went to a sugar bush so we could see how maple syrup was made, and we got to DRINK some. Hot and freshly made. Out of little paper cups like Magical Maple Faerie-drinks.
Now that I’ve graduated from kindergarten (and a few grades after that) I KNOW that fresh-made maple syrup is a Magical Faerie-drink for sure.
Also, it’s very important to lick the plate clean after pancakes if you’ve used good syrup. Trees went to a lot of trouble to make that syrup, so it’d be a shame to waste it. (Plus: it lets the other people in the restaurant know that you are Hard Core and Definitely Committed when it comes to sweets.)
Freshly poured maple syrup on ice rolled into lollipops are the tops! I love maple syrup so much that in anticipation of Sunday pancakes I brought some with me to Camp 2.0 and will bring more for May-Camp (generic table syrup does not compare). Great and informative article, Kristen.
Canadian girls like it in the “eh” hole, no?
I’m always reminded of Ross from Friends & the episode where he gets all hopped up on maple candies whenever maple is brought up. This probably says a lot about me, but I don’t know what.
This is a superbly-written article! I just finished leading an urban maple sugaring operation, teaching folks how to tap maples and boil down sap, and I’m thinking of cribbing your explanation of how sap flows for next year’s season.
Also, one if my favorite uses for maple sap and/or syrup: use it as simple syrup in making cocktails!
Awww. That makes me so proud!
if anyone asks about my sources, I will tell them with an ironically straight face it’s from a blog about female empowerment through cooking and the appreciation of Canadian culture.
!!!! read this with Grade A Dark Amber smeared from right earlobe to S key. before it was there it was in a bowl with a shake of pretzel salt because sometimes the only vehicle needed is a way to tip the bowl right down your throat. [SO ready for that Maillard rxn dance party]
I grew up in Ontario partially on my grandparent’s maple farm! Little 5-8 year old me in a full body pink snow suit and big green rubber boots used to lead people on our, “Pancake Days,” through the bush to the sugar shack for my Opa to continue explaining the process. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more Canadian!
Loved this article- super rad.
Hell yeah for cabane-a-sucre– trying to find a nice one outside of Montreal, any suggestions?
This was a very empowering article, and interesting. Thank you. I want to read yoyour other articles now.
also I know that one of the grades, I think B, is used in a fast with lemon and water.
Master cleanse? I really can’t support detox fasts/crash diets (but you do you). Lemon, maple and cayenne don’t really have any magical properties for detoxing… It just creates a giant caloric deficit so you’re bound to lose some water weight. Just be careful, it also recommends you drink saltwater as a laxative which can be dangerous.
I did the master cleanse for 3 days. It sucked. I was really grumpy and had no energy. But, it did inspire me to buy high-grade maple syrup all the time.
I’m a fan of maple-sugar candy, personally…
Whiskey + Maple Syrup = BLISS
Maple tempeh bacon D: kristen D: so good
Love, love love!!! Maple syrup in my tea and coffee. Once you go amber you’ll never touch that flavourless white stuff again!