I am beginning a new once-a-week post with thoughts about different aspects of cooking, ingredients, methods, or really anything I’ve put thought into and think you all might like to know about. If you have any special requests for topics, please comment and let me know! Here’s the first!
Our family seems to go through maple syrup at an alarming rate. It’s probably because I use it in our granola and granola bar recipes, but we also use it on pancakes and to lightly sweeten and add flavor to plain yogurt (which, by the way, we sometimes make at home in the crock pot). I know you can also use it as a substitute for refined sugar in lots of recipes, but I haven’t quite tried that yet.
I really enjoy the complex flavor of maple syrup, and even though it is extremely sweet, it has some wonderful vitamins and other nutrients in it as well. My first memorable encounter with maple syrup was actually with a “lemonade diet” cleanse about six years ago (for the record, I am not suggesting this type of cleanse to anyone). After drinking maple-lemon water for three or four days, I was sure I would never want to taste maple syrup again! Several years and lots of wonderful granola and pancakes later, I am happy to enjoy it again.
If you’ve ever shopped for maple syrup you probably know it is not cheap. I’ve found that, at least in the Portland area, the least expensive place to buy it is Costco, where it’s about $12.50 for a quart of Grade A. The next cheapest place, as far as I can tell, is Trader Joe’s, which is $17 or $16 for a quart of Grade A and Grade B, respectively (if I am remembering correctly). I actually would prefer to be buying Grade B because I like the deeper and more complex flavor and its better nutrient profile, but the $3.50 cost difference is a big deal to us at the moment.
What do you think? How do you use maple syrup, and where do you find it for a reasonable price?
I am sharing this post on Pennywise Platter Thursday over at The Nourishing Gourmet.
I’ve been buying maple syrup directly from a farmer for the past few years and the price has gone from $38/gal to $51/gal. I buy 2-3 gallons/year. I made your granola recipe but probably won’t again because it was SO sweet and uses so much syrup.
Maybe I will try to find a farmer in this area that sells it. $51/gallon is about the same as Costco. I am probably going to add some notes to the granola recipe on how to make it less sweet as soon as I get it figured out exactly. (I’ve been thinking of that lately – it was way too sweet for me last time I made it. Funny how my tastes change as we slowly change the way we eat!) It probably will still need the same amount of syrup, though, to keep everything stuck together, but I’d bet almost no brown sugar.
You can use some coconut oil in place of the sweetness in your granola – it works quite well. My granola recipe just uses seeds, but you can see what porportions of fat & sweetness I’ve used. It’s very mildly sweet, but my husband still thinks it’s candy.
We had been loving the price of the Costco maple syrup as well, until my daughter pointed out to me that the Costco bottle had recycling number 7 on the bottom of it, which means it could likely contain BPA. I saw that was something you were concerned about in your bean post. For now, we’re switching back to Trader Joe’s unless we can find it cheaper and in safe packaging somewhere else.
April, thanks for the heads-up – I hadn’t looked on the bottom. For what it’s worth, I do know that the number 7 recycling code does not guarantee BPA or even make it necessarily likely. The number 7 code is kind of a catch-all recycling code for every kind of plastic that’s not numbers 1 through 6 (PET, HDPE, vinyl, LDPE, polypropylene, and polystyrene, in that order) or an item that’s a combination of the 1-6 plastic types. Also from what I understand, polycarbonate (the plastic containing BPA) is usually is a hard, inflexible plastic, which the maple syrup bottle is not. So, I’m guessing that the maple syrup bottle is not polycarbonate and, thus, probably doesn’t contain BPA, but there’s certainly no guarantee. And there’s also no guarantee that it’s not made of a combination of some of the other plastics that are advisable to avoid (particularly, vinyl and polystyrene).
Anyway, enough of my plastics rambling! Thanks for the comment!
Hi, I came across this post doing some research on Maple Syrup. I just tried some for the first time from Costco and don’t think I am going to processed syrup. I have one recommendation for your granola recipe. Try using less syrup and some honey. That should help with keeping everything together.