Consul
Senior Cook
Hi, everyone! It's been a long time since I've hung around here. I've been back in college, so time has been limited.
I also didn't quite know where to put this thread. This seems as logical of a place as any.
Anyway, I decided to do a little experiment to see if I could make my own flavored syrups, for making my own cold coffee drinks, cream sodas, and the like. I started with lemon, since I had some of those I needed to use up.
I took two lemons, zested them with a veggie peeler, and put the resulting zest into a pot with 3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup water, and the juice of said lemons. Like making a simple syrup, I brought it to a boil, then let it simmer for about 10 minutes before straining it into a vessel to cool.
The resulting syrup is a nice, sweet, and very lemony punch in the face, which is what I was after. I still think there are some adjustments to be made, but overall, a similar process should yield nice, flavorful syrups for limes and oranges as well (you'll likely want to adjust the amount of sugar down for oranges).
I did this experiment fairly late here, tonight, and ended up waking my sister due to the lemon aroma permeating the house. I call that a success.
Next, I moved on to oranges. These were the steps I took:
Anyway, that's just one of the many experiments I've done over the past six months. I'm still trying to figure out how I might make a strawberry syrup suitable for drink flavoring, so if anyone has any ideas, I'm willing to listen.
I also didn't quite know where to put this thread. This seems as logical of a place as any.
Anyway, I decided to do a little experiment to see if I could make my own flavored syrups, for making my own cold coffee drinks, cream sodas, and the like. I started with lemon, since I had some of those I needed to use up.
I took two lemons, zested them with a veggie peeler, and put the resulting zest into a pot with 3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup water, and the juice of said lemons. Like making a simple syrup, I brought it to a boil, then let it simmer for about 10 minutes before straining it into a vessel to cool.
The resulting syrup is a nice, sweet, and very lemony punch in the face, which is what I was after. I still think there are some adjustments to be made, but overall, a similar process should yield nice, flavorful syrups for limes and oranges as well (you'll likely want to adjust the amount of sugar down for oranges).
I did this experiment fairly late here, tonight, and ended up waking my sister due to the lemon aroma permeating the house. I call that a success.
Next, I moved on to oranges. These were the steps I took:
- Peeled the zest off of an orange, and put it in a small sauce pot.
- Juiced said orange, and measured amount (I got a half a cup from it).
- Put juice and equal amount of sugar (in my case, a half-cup) into aforementioned saucepot.
- Placed on high heat to bring to a boil, then backed down to medium low to simmer for about five minutes.
- Strained through small strainer into bowl to cool.
- Poured into jar for fridge storage
Anyway, that's just one of the many experiments I've done over the past six months. I'm still trying to figure out how I might make a strawberry syrup suitable for drink flavoring, so if anyone has any ideas, I'm willing to listen.
