New Ingredient-Sorghum Syrup

I have finally finished reading Michael Twitty's book, The Cooking Gene, and in order to try out some of the recipes featured in the book, I had to get my hands on an ingredient that turns out is pretty much impossible to get your hands on in Seattle. I scoured every grocery store in my vicinity, and even made a special trip to Whole Paycheck Foods to look for it there, but with no luck. The only thing that could be done, was to order it online. I finally did, and it arrived last week in a super cute jug. I had no idea what it tasted like or how to use it, but I had a couple recipes to try and also have this handy guide called the internet to refer to for answers.

I had a roasted salmon recipe that calls for sorghum syrup, and decided to try it out last night. The recipe is from Cooking Light, and can be found here. The first thing I noticed when I opened the jug, was how sticky it is. It's super sticky. I'd say it's halfway between molasses and maple syrup in thickness. It got on everything, including things I swear I hadn't even touched. Be prepared to clean extensively when you're finished!

 This is the salmon with the sorghum-mustard glaze on it, waiting to go into the oven. After a discussion on twitter last night, I would say that using tofu would be an excellent vegetarian option for this. Please note, that the recipe doesn't call for salt, so you might want to add some anyway, or make sure to season properly before eating. Especially if you end up using tofu. I didn't have lemon zest on-hand, so I just threw in some lemon juice instead. It worked fine.

Here is the post-roasted, post-broiled salmon. I probably could have broiled it longer, but the glaze on the pan was getting really burned and I was afraid of it smoking too much, so I took it out. You can see the edges are nice and browned.

This was really tasty! Sorghum is hard to describe. When you initially taste it, there's an explosion of flavor in your mouth. There's an almost tart/sour flavor up front, but it quickly dissipates into a round, sweetness. It's less harsh than molasses, which I'm not terribly fond of. It's not mapley like maple syrup or like sugar. It really is its own, unique flavor. I was impressed, and ended up keeping the extra glaze to use again on some more salmon.

I found some other recipes to try, a cookie recipe and a cake recipe to try. I am also going to try out some of the recipes from The Cooking Gene, so I'll try to update when I try them out.

If you live in a region where you can easily access sorghum syrup, take a moment to appreciate it! It might not be special to you, but it's not something everybody can easily access. And for those of you wondering about ordering it for yourself, go for it! A little goes a long way, so it will last you a long time and make the cost worthwhile.