Test Kitchen tips: Keeping cooked sugar from crystallizing (2024)

FAQs

Test Kitchen tips: Keeping cooked sugar from crystallizing? ›

Keeping the lid ajar will allow some steam to escape as the sugar continues to cook. Add a little acid (such as a touch of lemon juice) or corn syrup to the sugar-water mixture before cooking; they help interfere with crystallization.

If your sugar starts to crystallize, squeeze a lemon into the pan. It will immediately stop the crystallization. and bring it all back to a nice, beautiful, lovely syrup.

If you are boiling sugar to make candy, the way to keep it from crystalizing is to add a little of a different kind of sugar—like for cane sugar you add a little clear corn syrup. Or you could add a little bit of acid, like vinegar or cream of tartar. It doesn't take much, just about a tablespoon.

heating. The higher the temperature of the melted sugar, the less moisture is left and the harder the cooled syrup will get. The sugar re-crystallizes into different tex- tures based on temperature.

Add lemon juice, or citric acid. You also need to clean the sides of the pot while you are boiling your syrup. The sides of the pot contained undiluted sugars, so when they touch the syrup your syrup will crystalize. If you're adding sugar and water together, don't bring it up to a boil.

Stir continuously until the sugar is dissolved.

Stirring at the beginning of the process helps break up lumps and make sure that the sugar is heated evenly. It's best to use a wooden spoon. Keep stirring until the sugar mixture turns clear and begins to boil.

Over LOW heat, let the sugar dissolve without letting it simmer! If it starts to simmer and your sugar is still in granules and has NOT dissolved, that can crystalize your caramel. You can swirl the pot — or at this point, you can go in with a clean spatula and stir it.

If you don't want to buy invert sugar, a simple way to prevent crystallization is to “invert” the sucrose by adding an acid to the recipe. Acids such as lemon juice or cream of tartar cause sucrose to break up (or invert) into its two simpler components, fructose and glucose.

Interfering agents (e.g., cream of tartar, lemon juice, corn syrup, molasses, or vinegar) are added to sugar syrup mixtures to prevent the formation of large crystals.

How would you prevent sugar from crystallising when boiling it? ›

Crystallization may be prevented by adding an interferent, such as acid (lemon, vinegar, tartaric, etc.) or glucose or corn syrup, during the boiling procedure.

Supersaturation between 70°C and 90°C represents the most favorable condition for crystal formation in a sucrose solution cooked to 112°C. Agitating the syrup at these temperatures induces relatively rapid crystallization, resulting in larger crystals compared to cooling the syrup to a lower temperature.

A supersaturated solution is unstable—it contains more solute (in this case, sugar) than can stay in solution—so as the temperature decreases, the sugar comes out of the solution, forming crystals. The lower the temperature, the more molecules join the sugar crystals, and that is how rock candy is created.

If your sugar has already crystallized in a pot or pan, add more water and return the mixture to a boil to dissolve the crystals. Use a small amount of water (the exact amount doesn't matter because it will evaporate). Start with a low heat to ensure the sugar doesn't burn.

Here's our method: Bring 2 cups of granulated sugar and 1 cup of water to a simmer in a medium saucepan. Continue to simmer the syrup, covered, for 10 minutes, and then let it cool completely. The syrup can be refrigerated for at least two weeks without crystallization.

When the sweetener goes through extreme temperature changes (heated up to dissolve it and then cooled down past room temperature) it crystallizes. Don't overheat the water and sweetener past what's necessary. Keep your mixture at medium heat when mixing it in a saucepan on the stovetop. It doesn't need to boil.

Stirring or bumping the pot can result in sugar clumping together and hardening into crystals. If you're making syrup with water, stir the sugar into the water to fully dissolve it before you add heat. Use a clean spoon every time you need to stir. The same goes for candy thermometers and any utensils.

Store Brown Sugar with Marshmallows

The moisture from the mallows gets absorbed into the dried-out sugar. Just drop a few marshmallows into your container of brown sugar and seal it up tight. The sugar should be softer in a day or so.

Choose a heavy-bottomed saucepan or pot for even heating. Make sure the pot is completely dry and free from moisture to avoid clumping. Combine two parts sugar with one part water in the pot. Heat the mixture over low heat, stirring gently until the sugar dissolves.