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| What is sorghum molasses? | to Top |
Puckett, Mark Damon. 2002Sept-Oct. Slow, Steady. sorghum takes its own sweet time. Saveur No. 61. pp. 22
Our family grew sorghum on a farm in Bedford, Virginia, a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Sorghum is the chief ingredient in molasses, and we made our own - "for the nostalgia", Dad told me. "For older people in the community , molasses was a sugar substitute when they were growing up. Sugar was expensive then." In May, w sowed cane with a planter; its budding stalks looked like corn until clusters of burgundy seeds began sprouting from their tops, by summer. Then the leaves changed from green to reddish brown. Once the stalks were ripe, they were heavy and as big around as your thumb. We stripped leaves by hand and fed them to our cattle. Late in September, before the first frost, we cut cane at the base, bundled it, and placed buncheson a wagon. With a chain saw, my father hacked off the burgundy seeds from the top, and we saved a five-gallon bucket of them for the next year's planting. On a creek bank, we unloaded stalks. Dad hooked the molasses mill's shaft to the shaft of a posthole digger on the tractor. Ingeniously, the mill spun. My grandfather fed cane through ill squeezed green juice into receptacles. My brothers and I would carry these containers to a three-inch-deep stainless-steel evaporator pan. Underneath it, we stoked a wood fire. My dad poured can juice into the pan, and we skimmed off the foam on its surface with wooden spoons. Pushed gently through the aisles of the pan, the green juice turned brown. After several hours, it became thick, sweet and dark golden. In autumn, I sold Mason jars of this molasses at elementary school. Dad taught me proper pouring: Hold the jar upside down and wait. As molasses seeps onto your toast, cut it agains the jar with a butter knife. The memory is strong- the slow process of creating molasses, and the slow process of pouring it.
Updated: Saturday, December 29, 2007.
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