Essential Sugars for Your Prepper Pantry - How They are Different - And Which Are Best for Baking

today i want to share with you the essential sugars for your prepper pantry and how each one is different and which ones are best for baking and cooking [Music] hi sweet friends i'm mary and welcome to mary's nest where i teach traditional cooking skills for making nutrient-dense foods like bone broth ferments sourdough and more so if you enjoy learning about those things consider subscribing to my channel and don't forget to click on the little notification bell below that'll let you know every time i upload a new video well many of you have shared with me in comments and emails that you get very confused when you go to the store and you see all the different types of sugars that are sold today and so what i wanted to do was walk you through starting with white sugar and moving all the ways to the other end of the spectrum finishing up with sukinat and explaining how each sugar is different and how it's best to be used in your baking and cooking now i just want to mention that if there's certain sugars you're interested in over others check the pin comment because i'll have time stamps associated with all of these now if you're at the very beginning of your journey from a processed foods kitchen to a traditional foods kitchen all you might have in your kitchen and in your pantry right now is plain white sugar and what you might have is just your typical pure cane sugar it's just your granulated sugar that when we just use the generic term sugar we think of this now as i said this is pure cane sugar or just white sugar sometimes you may see at your grocery store white sugar sold where it just says sugar and it doesn't say pure cane sugar that's generally made from sugar beets but it's also sugar but people have different opinions on what type of white sugar they like to use and many people prefer the pure cane sugar over the beet sugar or the sugar made from sugar beets because often sugar beets may be a genetically modified crop and there are people who are troubled by that so they'll always want to go with the pure cane sugar so if you're trying to avoid gmo foods then you'll want to look for pure cane sugar now for the most part as you're on your journey moving to a traditional foods kitchen over time you want to phase out as much white sugar from your baking and cooking as possible however there are certain times when white sugar really does come in handy for example if you're baking like say an angel food cake or around christmas time sort of a white snowball cake these things really do lend themselves best to just using white sugar and since it may not be something that you're eating on a regular basis i feel that it's okay to have some white sugar in your kitchen in your pantry also although i do share recipes for how to make jam without sugar i do think that certain jams lend themselves very well to be being made with sugar now i tend to not use a lot of sugar most of the recipes that i share are for low sugar jams but even so with those low sugar jams i do feel white sugar works very well so if you are a jam maker and at times there are certain jams you feel just lend themselves better to being made with white sugar i think strawberry jam is one of them then i recommend have some white sugar in your pantry because again just like with special occasion cakes that you're not being eating very often or jams that you're eating in very small amounts i i'm not i'm not a fanatic i guess you could say and i'm not going to say you can't have any white sugar in your kitchen i do think there are certain preparations as i've shared where it does come in handy to have a little white sugar in your pantry now when it comes to white sugar in this case pure cane sugar there are varieties and if you're wondering heb yes i live in central texas and a lot of things i buy come from hev which is a wonderful grocery store that we have here uh in central texas so i am using a lot of the heb brands but certainly any brand that you can find uh where you live is is just as good and none of this is sponsored i buy all of these myself for my pantry uh but i just as i said i think heb is a great grocery store and so that's where i shop so now talking about white sugar variations you're going to have powdered sugar which is very common and very easy to find you may also know this as confectioner's sugar or icing sugar it's basically white sugar that's completely been completely pulverized into a nice powder so it blends beautifully especially for making things like icing for a cake or cupcakes hence the name icing sugar it usually has a little bit of corn starch added into it to keep it from clumping however you know as i said i think there are certain preparations if you you know just like if you're baking a white cake uh specifically i'm thinking of the snowball cakes at christmas time where the cake is white the frosting is white and you put some coconut on it i think that having a little powdered sugar in your pantry is a good idea to have on hand mostly you know for those special occasion cakes now do you need to buy powdered sugar not necessarily you can take your plain granulated sugar and whirl it in your blender and turn it into a powdered sugar and one that if you're grinding just enough that you're going to use at that particular time for a particular recipe you don't need to worry about adding in any any little bit of cornstarch or arrowroot powder or things like that that would prevent it from clumping and that way if you're worried about any additives that are added to powdered sugar you can just make your own homemade powdered sugar and not worry about having to buy powdered sugar separately now what about this little fella in the middle this is called castor sugar and castor sugar is basically between regular granulated sugar and powdered sugar it's a very fine granulated sugar and it can be used in baking it can also be used for making icing as it will dissolve very well and but it will often commonly be seen as and served on the side when you're serving cold beverages that people may want to sweeten such as iced tea because if you put caster sugar in a cold beverage it will it will dissolve very quickly and very easily versus the uh larger crystallized sugar that tends to just kind of sink to the bottom caster sugar is often used also when making meringues you know to top maybe like a lemon meringue pie or something like that it because it does blend very well and very easily so you've got your regular plain sugar just your regular crystallized sugar for general baking what i would recommend you know as i said for maybe special occasion or holiday baking and jams you've got your powdered sugar which is very handy when making icing but again you can always make your own powdered sugar by just blending pulverizing some of your granulated sugar and then your caster sugar is very nice for your cold beverages or making meringues now can you make your own homemade caster sugar from your more traditional plain granulated sugar yes but you're going to have to be very careful because it's very easy to go from this to this powdered sugar very quickly so you can do a little bit of experiment and see if you can get a very fine yet still granular sugar so these are all made from sugar cane juice and what they do is go through a process of boiling and drying and extracting and so on and so forth you know it kind of boggles the mind what they go through to make sugar but the bottom line is they're going to extract all of the molasses in order to get these sugars to be what we think of as white sugars now molasses is basically the byproduct of making white sugar because white sugars had all this molasses extracted out of it but the wonderful thing about molasses is that it's very rich in vitamins and minerals and specifically it's rich in iron as a child my mother would often put a teaspoon of molasses in warm milk and give it to me to drink to make sure that as a growing child i had enough iron and molasses is wonderful to have on hand because it's great for baking especially when you're making things like gingerbread or molasses cookies it's also excellent in making barbecue sauces you can also add some to your dough when you're making rye bread and get that real nice dark rye that has a little touch of sweetness to it now molasses is also used to make what we call brown sugar now brown sugar comes in two varieties it comes in light brown sugar and then it comes in dark brown sugar and the difference is that the light brown sugar has less molasses in it and the dark brown sugar has more molasses in it i believe the light brown sugar they are adding in about three percent molasses and in the dark brown sugar i think they're adding in about six percent molasses but all they've done the manufacturers is taken white sugar and then they've added a white white sugar and then they've added in some molasses and depending on as i said the different percentages how much molasses they add back into the white sugar they make these brown sugars now you might be saying good grief why do they extract out all the molasses and then put some back in and then call it brown sugar and the reason is manufacturers like to really control this so that when you buy light sugar whether you buy this brand or another brand that there's consistency so that when you have a recipe that calls for light brown sugar you know that the brown sugar that you're using is appropriate just like you can make your own powdered sugar you can make your own brown sugar and i actually have a video where i show you how to do that how to make a light brown sugar dark brown sugar and something that's a little more similar to sukinat which is just simply dried sugar cane juice which we'll talk about in a minute but all you do is take some of your granulated sugar and i give you the proportions on how much molasses you have to add to make a light brown sugar and then how much molasses you have to add to make a dark brown sugar so again there's a lot you can do with just buying your white granulated sugar and some molasses now this is just a plain unsulfured molasses there's also something known as blackstrap molasses and basically what the difference is is that blackstrap molasses is going to be your most nutrient-rich molasses and if you can find it i recommend getting that but don't worry if all you have is something like what i have here it's still very nutritious but if you ever do come across blackstrap molasses in your travels definitely add it to your pantry now let's take a minute to talk about the shelf life of all of these there are variations of opinion on this but i'm going to kind of go over the basics here with you but also in the blog post that will correspond to this video i'll have some links for you that will take you to sites that talk about the shelf life of pretty much any food that you can think of so you can read those different opinions and see who uh which ones that you want to adhere to basically a white sugar like this a white granulated sugar is basically indefinite in terms of its shelf life it's considered what some will refer to as a forever food you can store it in the original packaging like this the way it comes from the store or in big packaging if you buy it in bulk at places like costco or if you buy really large amounts of sugar you can store it in the big food safe buckets like the big five gallon buckets with the gamma lids but basically it is considered a forever food so that's nice to know now powdered sugar and castor sugar the more you do to something even though yes a lot has been done to this in terms of nutrients being extracted but once you take something like a granulated sugar and you start doing things to it like pulverizing it adding in a little cornstarch whatever the case may be different sites that talk about food storage will say that this has a shorter shelf life now caster sugar something like this that's still in its granulated form even though it is uh pulverized quite finely considered superfine it's often referred to as superfine sugar i personally think that that like the more heavily granulated sugar has an indefinite shelf life and as far as powdered sugar is concerned the only real concern you're going to have is the clumping yes they often add a little something to prevent clumping but over time is it more susceptible to moisture and so on and so forth and might it clump together a little more that's always a possibility but i have a video where i go over all the storage options for how to store all kinds of different foods in your prepper pantry and i'll be sure to link to that in the i cards along also earlier i mentioned how to make the brown sugar i'll be sure to link to any videos i mentioned in the i cards and in the description below you just open the description under this video and i'll also put them in the pin comment and cause i know for some of you that's a little easier to see uh but if for any reason in terms of the i cards if i run out of room yes everything will be in the description under the video and in the pin comment now what about brown sugar brown sugar is recommended that if you buy it and it's in a sealed bag like this that it's always best stored in its original packaging but what if you open it or what if you buy a 25 pound bag of light brown or dark brown sugar and you open it and you want to keep it in a food safe bucket or some other way of storing it how do you keep it moist that is going to be the biggest challenge because brown sugar sugars in general don't go bad but they can just change in their appearance and their quality they can degrade so how do you keep brown sugar from degrading and what do we mean by degrading brown sugar can dry out and turn into something and maybe this has happened to you i know it's happened to me it can turn into something that's as hard as a brick so what you'll want to do once you open your brown sugar you'll want to put in a piece of bread and the bread will have moisture in it and that will allow the brown sugar to absorb some of that moisture from the piece of bread and just check it periodically and when that bread is stale then just put in a new fresh piece of bread but what if you don't want to use anything like that what if you don't want to have to be worrying about using bread and then what are you gonna do with that piece of bread and if you're like me you know i don't like to waste and and so uh what are some other options and the nice thing is there are these little terracotta shapes that are sold some people will just use a piece of terra cotta flower pot but you need to be very careful about that you need to make sure it's food safe but there are little food safe terracotta pieces sometimes they're shaped like little bears or something cute like that and you'll basically just soak that in water then dry it off and then you'll pop that down into your powdered sugar because powdered sugar likes a moist environment and so that little bear or whatever piece of terracotta that you use food safe of course will help keep your brown sugar moist and keeping your brown sugar moist is really the point of extending its shelf life for as long as you can basically keep it moist but what if it does turn into a brick is it done in four do you have to throw it out no brown sugar can often be brought back to life what you'll want to do is whatever vessel you've got it stored in and now it's in this form of a brick you'll basically want to get something moist you want to get maybe a piece of bread that you've put some water onto or a food safe cloth that you've wet and then wrung out and just put that on top of your brown sugar and then seal it up real well and then check it the next day is it softened yet is it starting to soften if not just repeat the process wring out your food safe cloth put it back into your bucket or wherever put the lid on or the plastic bag however you're storing your brown sugar and after a few days it should soften up and be very usable and tasty again and if you're like me and you use the flower sack towels to do things like straining your bone broth or your kefir to make kefir cheese or yogurt cheese things like that those food those are food safe and those flour sac towels work very well for this process just wet it wring it out real good put it on top of your brown sugar seal it up and in a day or two just keeping that towel moist should soften up your sugar so what about the shelf life of molasses can molasses go bad unopened molasses in a container like this should have a shelf life for about 10 years but once you open molasses you do run the risk of over time it developing potentially spots of mold so you just need to be careful and keep an eye on that if you do have an open bottle of molasses in your pantry now if you have room to store it in your refrigerator all the better and being stored in the refrigerator you're going to really extend its shelf life now i just want to mention in talking about storing any of these sugars that we're going to talk about today in our pantry when i use the term pantry you may have often heard me refer to it as the four corners pantry and when i say that i'm talking about the working pantry your everyday pantry that you access as i said every day and then what's your refrigerator what's in your refrigerator is another part of your pantry a third part of your pantry is your freezer and then the fourth part of your pantry is your extended pantry or your prepper pantry and we've been talking a lot especially this year about what to store in our prepper pantry and the prepper pantry serves many roles it serves the role of being able to re refill or restock so to speak our working pantry often in your extended pantry or your prepper pantry you're going to be storing a lot of non-perishable goods just like you would in your working pantry and this way when you run out of something you check your extended pantry and hopefully you have a few backups that you've accumulated over time and then you can basically restock your working pantry and then next time you're out shopping you can buy what you need to restock your extended or prepper pantry and so this way you keep things moving you don't allow things to expire and in the event of like what we went through this year or unemployment or bad weather you know that you have some food to back you up to that you can make meals and provide for your family and i have a whole series on how to stock the prepper pantry what foods should be in in your pepper pantry based on what you like how you can start stocking your prepper pantry on five dollars a week i have a whole series of videos i even have a 36 page free pantry list about all the traditional foods that you should be stocking your pantry with over time and i'll be sure to link to that again in the i cards and in the description and the pin comment below so that you can definitely watch that series if this is something you're interested in learning more about now back behind me on my kitchen counter are what i think of as all the sugars that are sort of on the continuum of sugars starting with the white granulated sugar at the very beginning and ending with what i've got here sukinet which is just dried cane juice sort of on the end with all of those somewhere in the middle and i'll be bringing those over to my kitchen island in a minute and i'll go over each one but i thought that i you know i started with the white sugar and i'm going to talk now about what's at the very end of of the continuum uh basically in discussing sukinat but also in addition to talking about all of the sugars over here i've got a lot of other sweeteners that although are not sugar cane enough derived from sugar cane they are whole natural sweeteners that can be very handy to have in your traditional foods pantry so i want to go over those as well that's kind of some bonus uh content but in any event what i want to do right now is just talk about sukanet sukinat is basically a very unprocessed form of sugar cane juice and the nice thing about sukinat is that it is granulated and it's very easy to bake and cook with also the nice thing about sukinat is that since it is the most unprocessed sugar and it's granulated you can basically use this one for one if you're replacing white sugar in a recipe now yes the taste is richer it is going to modify the taste a bit it is going to modify the color of your final baked good a bit but the nice thing is that it works very well in cookies very well in muffins very well in chocolate cake brownies anything like that really where i see white sugar as i shared with you earlier is more for those very specific special occasion cakes for the most part i use sukinat in pretty much all my baking so basically when did all of this develop you know what is sukanet new on the scene uh you probably if you've been with me a while and and you've uh you're a reader of the book nourishing traditions by sally fallon you know that she was talking about sukinet 20 or so years ago now before that i really wasn't very familiar with it but in doing some research i learned that tsukunat has actually been around since the 1970s it was a swiss inventor who figured out a process uh and i'm not a scientist but i think it's some sort of centrifugal force type uh invention that he created that allowed the ability to dry sugar cane juice and keep it in its 100 natural state while also crystallizing it which in this crystallized form just makes it so versatile as i said for baking and i'll also use it in cooking if i'm making a tomato sauce and i want a little bit of sweetness in it i'll just add my sukinat i find the taste very pleasant yes all of the molasses is intact so it is going to have a stronger flavor than white sugar but after using it for so many years i don't find that to be an overly strong or unpleasant flavor however if you're very much at the beginning of your traditional foods journey you're leaving your processed foods kitchen behind but you're at the beginning on your way to a traditional foods kitchen you may find the taste a bit strong so don't feel bad if you want to start small with it if you want to just replace maybe a quarter of the white sugar in one of your recipes and then over time as your palette and your family's palette your friend's palette you know gets used to the taste of a richer baked good you can start incorporating more the big thing is you take your time doing these things because if you do this slowly uh you'll have success you know i often joke that i say that if you get the book nourishing traditions and then you announce to your family okay we're having liver tonight because sally does talk a lot about eating or the benefit of eating organ meats everybody's gonna just raise their hands up and go what no you know so i think with any of this as you're on your journey to your traditional foods kitchen incorporate these things slowly and buy a small bag take it a little taste on the spoon see what you think substitute a quarter of the white sugar in a recipe with the sukinats see if you notice a difference see if you find it pleasant i think you actually will i find that it imparts a richer flavor level to baked goods especially chocolates chocolate chip cookies oatmeal cookies brownies i think it works beautifully i think it also works great as the type of sugar to sprinkle on top of hot cereals like oatmeal if you like putting brown sugar on oatmeal you'll love putting sukinat on your oatmeal so starting to add sukinat into your prepper pantry and your working pantry is a smart idea as you're on this traditional foods journey now how long does this last now i bought this the other day and this is december 2020 and this shows a best buy date of april 2024 but again as i mentioned there are differences of opinions on how long food is actually good for and this is why you're seeing more and more on foods simply best buy date as opposed to expiration date so this is recommended that it's going to be best through 2024 mid 20 april 2024 however uh not unlike your granulated sugar sukanat actually can have a very long shelf life now yes it has the molasses intact but unlike the brown sugars where they're adding the molasses back in and it's kind of a wet clumpy wet sandy type of sugar this because of that interesting process in terms of how it's made and being granulated you're going to find that it's more similar to the you know typical sugar and it's going to stay nicely granulated and in good working conditions so to speak for longer than your brown sugars but what if you decide that you want to put some of this away in your prepper pantry for long-term storage and it does get hardened you can just use the same technique you use with your brown sugar to help soften it up but i think you're going to find that this is going to stay granulated for quite a long time now sukinat the name sukinat stands for sugarcane natural basically what they've done is taken the first few letters of sugar the first few letters of a cane and then the first few letters of natural and you come up with soukinet sugar cane natural and this name is trademarked and it's generally the the sugar cane that they use to make sukinate i believe generally comes from costa rica you may see other products that are basically like soukinet but are labeled uh differently you may see something sold simply as dried sugar cane juice and then that would simply be dried sugar cane juice very similar to exactly what sukinat is you may see it sold under the name rapidura that is also dried sugarcane juice the only difference is they're different companies and they have different names for their product and i believe rapidura is made with sugar cane uh that comes from brazil uh i i believe that that's correct so there are different names for basically the same thing so you're gonna if you want dried sugar cane juice and because of the nutritional profile it's still got all the molasses in it but it's just because it's very unprocessed it's not where you've taken white sugar and added molasses back in this never had the molasses extracted out and it's done in a way that is supposed to keep the nutrients very intact and so on and so forth so this can be considered very nutritious now yes it's still a sugar you don't want to overdo but the nice thing is it does have all the vitamins and minerals intact so if you want a very unprocessed sugar that has all the vitamins and minerals as i said intact you want to look for suconat or rapidura or simply something that says dried sugarcane juice so we've covered the very beginning of the sugar continuum and we've gone to the very end of the sugar continuum you've got your white sugar on one end you've got your sukinat on the other now what's in the middle well after white sugar the next sugar that is less processed than white sugar are sugars like this that you may see called raw sugar or turbinado or demerara basically with these sugars what you'll find is that they have a very large crystal to them and you may have often seen these used to sprinkle maybe on top of a cupcake or on top of a muffin where you see some a light brown colored but large granulated sugar that's not moist or anything like your brown sugar that's actually individual granules and that have a crunch to them often you may see sugar in the raw or sometimes turbinado sold in little packages and you may also see this at restaurants and people will put this in their coffee or in their tea it these sugars are less processed than white sugar but they don't have all the molasses in them some of the molasses has been removed and and the way that they're processed is also in sort of a drying centrifugal force type uh processing that allows this granulation to be in place yet to have some of the molasses also still in place and that's why they have this light brown color and generally for these the way that i like to use them is to top baked goods where i want a little crunch or to add to coffee or tea where i want something that gives a little bit of a richer flavor than sweetening those hot beverages with white sugar wood now if you're at the beginning of your journey from a processed foods kitchen to a traditional foods kitchen these can be very good to start incorporating into your pantry now i generally don't recommend them for baking but in a pinch you could always pulverize them and then you would have something more along the lines of a powdered sugar if you have a recipe that calls for powdered sugar and you want to use something that has a little more molasses and a little more nutrition in it you could certainly do that but primarily i think these are very good for topping baked goods for crunch for using in a hot beverage and topping hot cereal with if you like brown sugar on your oatmeal as i said sukinat can be very nice when you get to the point that you like the taste of sukinat these can be a very good place to start too these sprinkled on oatmeal are very nice not only do they give the sweetness and a little bit of that rich sweetness flavor because they do contain some molasses they also give a nice little crunch so if you're baking something and you don't really feel like doing a crumb topping and going into that level of of work you can just sprinkle some demerara or some turbinado or sugar in the raw right on top and you have a nice little basically mock crumb topping that gives some crunch to your muffin or other baked good now these are made in slightly different ways but it's really not crucial to know all of these differences you know as i said demerara in order to get the crystallization is processed like in a centrifugal kind of drying force turbinado i believe is like the first pressing of the cane juice and i think sugar in the raw in many ways is similar to turbinado they basically all look very similar sometimes turbinado is a little finer and sugar in the raw is a little bit finer than your demerara which is often got a very large crystal to it but overall they're similar in taste and they're similar in their nutritional profile you may just notice some slight difference in their level of granulation and like your white granulated sugar and your granulated sukinat your demerara your turbinado and your sugar in the raw also have a fairly long shelf life because they are granulated they're drier and then and the drier the sugar the less inclined it is to become hard like your brown sugars so these do store very well in your prepper or your extended pantry as well as your working pantry and just to give you an example i bought this turbinado sugar the other day and as i said we're in december of 2020 and this has a best buy date of november 2024 and again that's best buy chances are if you buy this turbinado and store it as is in your extended pantry it will last well well beyond 2024 and speaking of your extended pantry i discussed this in more detail in my prepper pantry series videos but as i said your extended pantry or your prepper pantry is where you keep your backup supplies so that you can restock your working pantry especially if you're in a situation where you can't get to the grocery store and the extended pantry keeps you from running out of food you can also designate an area of your prepper pantry or your extended pantry to be what we call sometimes the survival pantry and that's really where you store your forever foods in the event that there was ever some type of very severe emergency but the nice thing about that is you don't need to buy any fancy foods you don't need to buy what are they freeze-dried foods or things like that there are a lot of foods that are classified as forever foods that will last you know often 25 years or more that you can put in that little area of your prepper pantry that you designate okay those are foods i'm not going to touch i'm just going to keep those separate in my survival area in the event that there are very hard times and i'll be sure to link to the video where i discuss those forever foods and i think that you'll really find that very interesting when i was researching i found it fascinating uh the amount and number of foods that can that by the us department of agriculture i live here in the united states that the u.s department of agriculture says basically do last forever and i found that i found it quite interesting and i think you'll enjoy that video if that is something that if there's a part of your prepper or extended pantry that you do want to designate for very long-term storage the next sugar i want to talk about is muscovado now the muscovado that i have here is dark muscovado it also comes in light muscovado now that may sound familiar to you because we talked about light brown sugar and dark brown sugar the same is true of muscovato there's dark and light and technically this is really your true brown sugars because muscovado is very unprocessed basically when they make dark muscovato they're extracting very little of the molasses that occurs naturally in the sugarcane juice and when they make the light muscovado they extract a little more molasses so basically what they're doing when they make the muscovato is they're extracting some of the molasses unlike what we know as light and dark brown sugars they're not starting with white sugar and adding molasses back in they're starting with the sugar cane juice and they're boiling it and preparing it in a certain way and just taking out some of the molasses so it's much less processed than what we know as brown sugar now generally muscovato is sold in these smaller packages at least where i live and it's considered a little bit more of a gourmet item because it is such a unrefined product and it you may also see it labeled sometimes you may know it as barbados sugar but in the area where i live it's referred to as muscovado sugar and it comes from different places around the world but it's a very nice sugar and it's because it's a very natural brown sugar and it's very rich in vitamins and minerals and it works really great in baking it works great for gingerbread molasses cookies chocolate cakes brownies all of your darker baked goods muscovado blends beautifully adds a wonderful sweet sort of rich flavor that complements itself very well with those highly spiced or chocolate baked goods so if you have a recipe that calls for light brown sugar or dark brown sugar and you want to use something that's less processed than what we think of when we think of those light and dark brown sugars you can use dark muscovado or light muscovado and in addition to baking it really works in the same way that you would use brown sugar it's great for sprinkling on oatmeal it's great for mixing in and when you're doing like a cooked barbecue sauce and putting in some of this if you're not using molasses and you want to use a brown sugar a dark muscovado or a light muscavado is fantastic the flavor profile in addition to it being very nutrient rich i find the flavor profile is deeper than the more processed brown sugars i i it may take i get a little getting used to if you're at the very beginning of your traditional foods journey you may find if molasses is not something that you've used a lot in your kitchen you may want to start slow with muscovado because i do feel that the flavor profile is richer and deeper something that i like but again you know it's something that your palette may need to adjust to over time but i do find that the flavor palette is richer and deeper than your more highly processed brown sugars now what about shelf life the muscovado in many ways reacts very similar to your brown sugars it is a very moist sugar and it can harden into a brick just like brown sugars can over time once they're open and exposed to air so you want to try to store this in its original packaging and eventually if you do open it you want to store it in a moist way the same way we talked about how to store brown sugar and then if you find yourself in a situation where your muscovado is as hard as a brick again you can reconstitute it basically in the same way you would refresh the brown sugar that we talked about earlier now i don't know if you see these a lot at your grocery store but i live in as i've shared with you in central texas and so we border with mexico and we have a lot of mexican foods here there's a lot of like tex-mex restaurants and all of that and so we have a lot of mexican specialty foods in our grocery stores and this is one that is very common and it'll be in the sugar section sometimes it'll be in the baking section and it looks just like this there's a little cone and uh it's got the name on it panella now it also has above that and excuse me if i butcher this pronunciation but i believe it's pilin cielo pelencillo and this is wonderful this is basically a sugar cane juice that's grown in mexico and they simply boil it i believe that's how it's processed and they pour it into a mold and that's why it looks in this shape and this is very rich in nutrients this in many ways and we'll talk about this fella over here in a minute but these two in many ways are very related to soukinet they're both basically dried sugar cane juice the only difference is how they're processed and how their process can affect you know the nutritional profile a little number one and number two how they're processed is also affecting their consistency and their ease or lack of ease in terms of use you know as i said sukinet being processed in the way in with the equipment that was developed in the 1970s makes this a very nice granulated product that's very easy to use the pinella you know the p pilincillo [Music] needs to be grated or chopped with a knife but once you grate this up or chop this with a knife it can be used very similarly to how you would use soukinet to how you would use your brown sugars it's very tasty i have a friend who will often grate this up and make a hot chocolate drink a mexican hot chocolate and that's got a little spice to it and she'll grate this and use this in it and it's quite lovely now this is another uh dried sugar cane juice that you might see as well in your store or this if it's not very common in your area you may have to get this online if this was something that you would be interested in this is common commonly comes from india and again i hope i pronounce it correctly i believe it's pronounced jaggery and this is also made again from unrefined cane juice and they do a very similar process to the mexican pinella they i believe boil it pour it into molds and then grate it or chop it when they want to use some type of use it in some type of baking or cooking or however they want to use it now this jaggery is made from dried sugar cane juice i know that sometimes people have told me in comments when we've talked about sugars in the past or in emails that jaggery sometimes can be made from the sap and of sap is the right word but of a palm tree or uh different sources like that i have not personally seen that the jaggery that i have always seen does always say uneven unrefined evaporated sugar cane juice so if that's important to you to make sure that what you're using is a form of dried sugar cane juice you want to make sure that your jaggery does list that but like this pelencillo i like saying that it it's very tasty jaggery is very tasty and if you spend some time researching online i always find very interesting because the indian cuisine often talks about the nutritional benefits of their cooking like with turmeric and how that is very much an anti-inflammatory and that is in many of their dishes and you might hear about turmeric tea and you'll sometimes see discussions online about sweetening your tumeric tea using jaggery and they'll talk about the nutritional profile of jaggery and the benefits that they believe that it brings to the human body and i just find that fascinating but like any unprocessed sugar it is going to be rich in vitamins and minerals with all of that molasses in place but again yes these are sugars and they do you know affect your body in ways that sweeteners do and so you just want to keep that in mind i don't recommend using any of these in excess i recommend using them in small amounts but i think a little jaggery and a turmeric tea would be delightful i think some of the vanilla in a hot cocoa or hot chocolate would be wonderful now shelf life basically in my book i think these are basically forever foods because they're already hard as rocks this is very hard and this is very hard and so there's no fear of it turning hard or turning into something that's not very useful i think that stored in their original packaging and or after you open them just sealed very well hopefully their nutritional profile will stay intact for a good long while and be some nice handy sweeteners for you that you can grate or chop up and you know i think like all of these sugars that we're talking about where many of them yes may have very long extended shelf lives will they be as nutritious as the day you bought them if you opened to them 25 years from now no they do degrade in terms of over time in some of their nutritional profile and i have more information on that if you you know watch that video and you see the links that i share in the forever foods video but overall often the decrease in the nutritional profile isn't incredibly significant there's some decreasing in nutrition but much of the nutrition of these more molasses based sugars does stay in place so it can be something that's wonderful both for your everyday working pantry or your extended and or prepper pantry now might you find other sugars with different names that are on the continuum from white sugar all the way to sukinet yes but what you need to know is that basically they're somewhere on that continuum they're just basically going to be a little less or a little more processed than white sugar or sukinat but they're basically going to be somewhere in the middle and over time the more you can move to using sugars that are less processed and have more molasses in them the better now what i want to go over here is sort of a little bonus information these are technically not sugars they're not made from sugar cane juice they are made they're just made from various things but they are natural whole sweeteners first what i've got over here is coconut sugar i like coconut sugar i find in many ways it's very similar in its taste profile to sukinat although you really do need to buy small amounts of these and taste them on a spoon and see what you think because some people feel i don't really taste coconut from these sweeteners but they do have a rich taste profile not necessarily molasses that's word like a soukinet or a muscovado or some of these others that we've talked about here today but it does have a richer flavor profile and but because it's more or less granulated i find it stores very well and i find that it works very well in baking for basically a one-to-one substitute in recipes that may call for white sugar or light brown sugar or dark brown sugar i don't get too fussy you know with recipes if i just want to make something and i want to use a whole sweetener i'll just take it no matter what it says and it usually comes out okay if it's a white sugar i'm replacing or light brown sugar or dark brown sugar if i'm replacing it with one of these whole sweeteners it usually works out just fine and i find that coconut sugar does work quite well in baking and it's also something that again you can sprinkle this on [Music] your cereal you know if you eat hot cereal like oatmeal i think it can work very well in place of brown sugar in terms of beverages this is where i have found people tell me that they do notice a distinct flavor if they try to use this in making hot cocoa or hot chocolate or putting it in their tea or putting it in their coffee they find that they're not a fan of the flavor profile but it's not as distinct if you're just mixing it in with some hot cereal or you're using it in baking so these are good places to experiment also in cooking i have although i think my italian mother would say what the heck are you doing i have put some a little pinch in tomato sauce to sometimes reduce the acidity i've also used this in barbecue sauces so it has a lot of uses now something that i want to clarify because this can be very confusing to folks if you notice this says coconut sugar and this is the wholesome brand that also makes soukinette wholesome and i think they made the molasses as well they make a lot of natural sweeteners this says coconut palm sugar these are exactly the same thing what can be confusing is there's also something called palm sugar and that's made from a different type of palm not the coconut palm and it does it's made a little differently and it has a little different nutritional profile but it's not something that i buy it's not something i can even easily find these i can pretty much easily find at my grocery store i'm amazed at the selection of sweeteners that not just my grocery store but other grocery stores i've been to carry because i think many people are on this journey to a traditional foods kitchen and they're trying to incorporate more whole sweeteners into their uh into their diets you know into their cooking and speaking of whole sweeteners today we're talking about sugar and other whole sweeteners these all have calories associated with them i do have a video where i discuss all of the locale no cal keto friendly whatever sugar sugar substitutes like your stevia or erythritol monk fruit i have a video where i go over all of those and what exactly their pri flavor profiles are like and where you can use them and so on and so forth and it's actually in the middle of a video where i'm showing you how to make a keto coffee cream or a homemade powdered keto coffee creamer but i will put the link to that in the description and in the pin comment below and i'll put the timestamp as to where i have this discussion about all of these locale and no-cal sweeteners if that's something that you're interested in learning more about i found it fascinating i used some of them but not all of them and i found it fascinating researching them and learning what was keto friendly what was not and what's low carb and all of these different things and the effect on the body and so but i will put a time stamp uh it as to where in that video is that discussion so you can watch that separate from the overall video if if uh making a keto coffee creamer is not something that you're interested in doing which i understand but in any event so if you're looking for coconut sugar it may say coconut sugar or it may say coconut palm sugar but just palm sugar is something different so just be alerted to that but as i said i find coconut sugar very versatile next what i want to talk about is honey i like honey because honey is very easy to find this is a local honey there's a town called round rock that's north of austin texas i live in the hill country between austin and san antonio but this is a local uh honey company in round rock and they make wonderful honey as you can see this is just a delightful dark and pourable honey which makes i like whoops i like honeys that are also very dense as well but i do like to keep pourable honeys on hand because these are very useful when baking and if you want to replace any of these sugars or whole sweeteners with a liquid sweetener like a honey and we'll talk about these other ones in a minute basically you're going to use less than you would of your dry ingredients so and sometimes you need to adjust your liquid but generally a rule of thumb is three about three quarters of a cup of honey can replace one cup of a whole a whole sugar or dried sugar or dried whole sweetener but as i said pourable honeys are great to keep on hand because they are easy for baking you can also use them in your cooking they are great in barbecue sauces baked beans that's something that i mentioned with some any of these that have the molasses in them are wonderful sugars to use in baked beans and again you know of course for tea you can never go wrong with some honey now honey it can also be found in something and i'm not sure if it's called honey powder or dried honey something like that where they've actually dehydrated i gather honey liquid honey uh but i think it's very expensive and i think it's hard to find so it's generally not something that i would recommend using but if it's something that you're interested in know that it is available now two other liquid sweeteners that i want to talk about are date sugar and maple syrup and both of these are available in dried forms and they are a little easier to find now date syrup in many ways is very similar to molasses it's very dark it's got a very rich flavor and if this is something that you want to incorporate into your kitchen because of its nutritional profile it is very nutritious just like dates are this is a very good option again though you know it's going to have that very rich flavor not unlike a molasses and so you would use it in a similar way with your gingerbreads your molasses cookies all right you should say mock molasses cookies your chocolate cakes your brownies it can work very well in place of molasses now they also make date sugar and this is a nice granulated also it's very easy to work with and it's got a nice flavor to it if you like dates you know this is something you need to keep in mind i'm not saying you need to have every single one of these in your pantry it's really going to be a matter of what type of whole sweeteners that are nutritious you know that have a nice nutritious profile that you want to incorporate into your pantry because you like them and you like their flavors but i find day sugars i like dates and i find date sugar very pleasant and is it funny it even says on the front pleasant tasting natural sweetener raw and unprocessed excellent for use in baked goods and i would agree this can easily replace brown sugar wherever a recipe calls for it or if you didn't have sukinat and you'd rather use dates in place of uh tsukinet you can use that you could use it in place of coconut sugar it works very well in baked goods and even your lighter colored baked goods you know like if you're making banana muffins or apple muffins or anything like that i think that it's relatively light in color it's a little lighter in color than coconut sugar and it can work even if you're doing a yellow cake we'll talk about maple sugar in a minute for a yellow cake but i think date sugar can work as well and as and as the package says and as i agree it does have a i think a pleasant relatively mild flavor compared to the date syrup which i think is quite a bit stronger now like honey maple syrup can be used in baking and in many places where you might use a touch of molasses but you want something lighter in flavor or you like the maple flavor and you want to add it to baked beans or barbecue sauce or you're doing a baked good where you don't mind that there might be a little bit of that molasses flavor again it's similar to honey in that you would use maybe about three quarters of a cup in place of any of your dried whole sweeteners but this can work i think very well in baking and very well in cooking now not unlike the date syrup and date sugar you can also buy i don't have this i bought some maple sugar but i keep it in a container in my pantry so i don't have the actual container that it came in but i do keep some maple sugar on hand and this is a very nice light crystallized product and we'll talk about the shelf life on all of this in a minute but i like maple sugar very much if i'm looking to bake something that i want a lighter color and i don't mind a little infusion of the maple flavor and i find that maple sugar can work well when making a yellow cake and depending on what other flavorings you're adding in terms of the icing and whatnot i don't feel that the maple flavor that comes through is really strong you may not even notice it i highly recommend experimenting with it but i really do reserve maple sugar for those times that i want to bake something that i want to retain a lighter color and the reason is that i do keep this really just for almost those special occasion baked items is because maple sugar can be costly and as i've shared with you you know i think it's very important when it comes to buying any of these buy what's in your budget and then as you're making your journey to your traditional foods kitchen and you start buying less processed foods and you start eating out less and you can move monies around that can be more devoted to your grocery budget and then you can buy foods that maybe originally didn't fit into your grocery budget that's great but always stay within your grocery budget because i always say stress is the worst thing for our diets so i don't think that you want to buy things that are too expensive and i do feel maple sugar is costly so i really do reserve this for uh sort of my special occasion baking now talking about maple syrup maple syrup used to be described as grade a or grade b and grade a was a little lighter and grade b was a little darker and actually grade b uh according to sally fallon in nourishing traditions uh is considered to be more nutritious than the grade a so i would all and it was less expensive which was nice and so i would always buy the grade b maple syrup now the labeling it's my understanding that the labeling of maple syrup has changed so what you may see now is everything labeled grade a but there may be the the distinction of grade a amber or grade a dark and if you're incorporating maple syrup into your diet and you like the taste of maple syrup i would recommend buying that grade a dark because i do believe that has more nutrition now shelf life basically a lot of these can last a very long time not unlike some of the others that we talked about now some of the other sugars that we talked about and how they have very long shelf lives now a lot has to do with has it been opened or has it not been opened date syrup if it's not opened can have a very long shelf life not unlike molasses that hasn't been opened if you do open it and you can and you have room in your refrigerator and you can refrigerate it that's great if not it can stay at room temperature you just as i said with the with the molasses you just want to keep an eye on it and make sure that it's not degrading make sure that no mold has developed in it the same is true of maple syrup unopened maple syrup can last a very long time once opened it is recommended that you refrigerate maple syrup now unlike date syrup once you open this you don't have to refrigerate it as a matter of fact on the packaging it says you know refrigeration not necessary however i'm just recommending that if you do open it and you have space in your refrigerator you may be able to prolong its shelf life by having it refrigerated however when it comes to maple syrup once you open it it is recommended to refrigerate it because you can develop mold or other problems in terms of spoilage quicker than you can with other items that are opened and not immediately refrigerated now when it comes to honey honey is one of those forever foods you can open it you can leave it at room temperature you don't need to worry about it honey we're told should last forever it may crystallize on you and you can always put it down if it's in a liquid form like this and you can still consume it like that if you want or you can put it in a little hot water the container and let it soften up or loosen up and come back to its liquid form but basically honey is just a wonder food you can basically have it forever now date sugar because it is in the crystallized form does uh hold up very well like any of your crystallized sugars it does have a little moisture in the in the sense that it's simply made from dates and no no other ingredients so it's just basically dried dates and in in made into a sugar form and so you might get a little bit of clumping but and if for any reason it turned hard on you you could simply use the same methods that we use for softening up brown sugar and the muscovado other other sugars that can have somewhat of a sandy consistency and potentially harden although in kept in its original packaging it does stay uh quite fresh for a long time so that's something to keep in mind and the same with maple sugar thanks to this very granulated form that it's sold in also has a very long extended shelf life and is very unlikely to uh you know turn clumpy or into any kind of brick if stored if you want to store it for the long term and you store it in the original packaging that it comes in it'll last a very long time and you shouldn't have any trouble with it now these two coconut sugars i also bought recently and as i said just to repeat we are in december 2020 and this has a best buy date of june 2023 and this one has a best by date of july 2023 and again you know these are very granulated you can hear that and stored in their original packaging they're going to last a very long time if once opened you do want to keep them you know sealed tightly to try to keep as much moisture and air away from them but most likely they're going to hold up very well like any of these sugars that are in this granulated form the granulation of however it's processed really helps extend the shelf life if you'd like more information on how to stock your prepper pantry be sure to click on this video over here where i've got a playlist of my whole prepper pantry series including information where you can download that 36 page pantry list which is totally free and i'll see you over there in my texas hill country kitchen love and god bless

Channel: Mary's Nest

Views: 31,887

Rating: 4.9457011 out of 5

Keywords: Essential Sugars for Your Prepper Pantry - How They are Different - And Which Are Best for Baking, Essential Sugars for Your Prepper Pantry, How are sugars different, Which sugars are best for baking, which sugars are best for cooking, what is the difference between white sugar and brown sugar, what is sucanat, sucanat sugar, sucanat, what is brown sugar, what is demerara sugar, what is turbinado sugar, what is panela, jaggery, what is jaggery, prepper pantry, marysnest, marys nest

Id: 6w3aszSdpGY

Length: 70min 38sec (4238 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 12 2020