Transcript: Ginger Sugar (Alberta Essential)

Cocktails on the fly
Episode “Ginger Sugar”

Alberta Straub: Hi everybody, flighty here. Ok, you know what? This is a very important episode right now, a very important flight show, because she is going to show you how to make one of the most special ingredients that she has in her bar. I swear to god if I come to work and I found out ha I am out of my ginger cardamom sugar, I totally freak out, because I love this stuff. It adds pizzazz to all these cocktails.
I can make a cocktail. Make a mojito then add a little bit of my special sauce to it. Got my customers coming up going ooh your mojito's are so tasty they are so good. The ginger cardamom sugar is great with whiskey. Make a horse’s neck out of it, my playboy bourbon cooler, and Pimms cup. It just adds pizzazz and goodness to cocktails.
Anything I make with ginger ale I always add the ginger cardamom syrup, because the ginger ale that you guys buy these days. That is available on the market, does not taste like ginger at all. I like a little fire in my ginger ale. I like a little fire in my cocktail that has ginger. Ginger is yummy. A little bit of cardamom, and a little bit of chili powder to get it extra hot. Give it that pop. It is good, good, good.
So what we are going to do is we are going to make a mix of sugar to water. I am going to mix it one to one. So I got some hot water here in the bowl already, as a demonstration okay, because typically you would do this on the stove, alright. So we got that going okay?
And we are going to start our stirring process. So you are going to pretend this is a stove. I am stirring, doo, doo, doo. And then you’re going to have about a pound of ginger. So you are going to peel it and slice it thin on a mandolin slicer. You know flighty likes that mandolin slicer right. So you got to peel okay. So you are going to put it in there. So it is about a pound.
And then I am going to put a couple of sticks of cinnamon. Not too much cinnamon. Cinnamon can quickly and easily become over powering ,so be careful about that. And then I want about a quarter cup of cardamom, now the cool thing about the cardamom. I just go to tell you, it is so nice. That is about a quarter cup, is after the sugar is done.
The cardamom pods stay in the sugar and they are so tasty. Because you have and it and you can like have little pieces in there. And you bite into one and it is like you just taste it. And the little cardamom pods ,the little seeds in there. They taste super sweet and good, gingery good. It is great on a cocktail, you put it on the top and it is like a little garnish, fantastic.
Okay and then I am going to put in a table spoon of chili powder, and that is to give it a little extra heat. There we go. Okay so mix it up a little bit. Then you put it on the stove at a really, really low temperature, for about an hour or an hour and a half. And you just keep checking it and making sure it doesn’t burn. You don’t want it to caramelize.
Keep checking our sugar you don’t want to cook it ,and keep stirring it. And in about an hour an hour and a half you will have this great, great tasting sugar. It is very gingery, it is hot, and it’s spicy. It is so good. And then you know the really cool part is when these have cooked and caramelized in the sugar and stuff. You can use these as garnishes on top of cocktails and you can use these as garnishes and candy ginger, super tasty and flavorful.
So this is Flightys special cardamom ginger sugar. Oh so good, special sauce, accents for your cocktails. Yum, yum good, make it okay, flighty essential, cheers.
Ginger cardamom sugar:
1. Dissolve 2 cups of sugar in 2 cups of hot water
2. Add 1 lb. peeled ginger, sliced wafer thin
3. Add 2 cinnamon sticks
4. Add ¼ cup of cardamom pods
5. Add 1 tbsp. of chili powder
6. Cook on low for 1-1.5 hors
7. Delicious