I've made floral inverted syrups before (mostly lavender). I don't boil the flowers prior to putting them in the syrup. I just bring the sugar up to temperature, toss the flowers in, turn off the heat, let it cool, then strain it into jars.
I was going to suggest this. It makes sense but I haven't tried it. Perhaps toss the flowers in only after the sugar goes down to 100 C, worth trying either way.
If you just have a gas hob, a trick I learned to even out the heat is put a flat cast iron pan on the hob and then the pot on top of it. It distributes the heat a bit more evenly like you would get on an electric stove
Why is that necessary, if you have a good quality pan? The metal should be conductive enough to even out on its own. His issue with the gas stove was that the flame was heating the sides of the pot as well.
@@JohnDlugosz the answer to your question is in your question lol. Not everyone has good quality pans and pots. Not everyone can afford them. This method ensures that the flame is not directly on your pot, thereby evening out the heat. Ive found It's especially useful with steaming rice where the direct flame would cause the rice to stick to the bottom of the pot and burn. If you do this, it doesnt stick and the rice is steamed evenly.
This is an OLD family recipe passed down through my family. We use purple clover, white clover, and fireweed. This video absolutely made my day, week, and year!! Open comments for my recipe. 🐝
Our recipe: 30 purple clover flower's 60 white clover flowers 30 fireweed flowers 10 cups sugar 2.5 cups water 1tsp alum Boil water, alum and sugar until the liquid dissolves into liquid Remove from heat Add flower's and let set 10min Strain out the flower's. Done!
@@cantsay (assuming veganism as a philosophy based on the opposition to the exploitation of animals, rather than simply a dietary choice) Honey is also vegan if you do a little semantic gymnastics. I mean, yes, honey is made by bees, but it's not exactly a fluid produced by their innards like for example milk is in the case of mammals. And I'm sure that at least in western countries, bees are aptly compensated for their work in the form of a guarateed annual 20 days of paid holiday as well as paid parental leave and covered health insurance and educational expenses. And even if you _do_ view any product that is in any way derived from animals to be inherently anti-vegan, shouldn't that count for humans too? At which point you're actually putting yourself in a rather difficult situation as it basically becomes impossible to interract with society in any way shape or form. Ooooor, you could define yourself as a communist and say that any product derived from the exploitation of others is inherently immoral, BUT still acknowledge that it's impossible to live in the present day without partaking in the capitalist system to one degree or another, which by the very same logic invalidates veganism by the same grounds; the logic veganism bases itself on, when taken to its conclusion, results in complete abstaination from society as a whole, as the very same exploitative mechanisms that enables the mass production of animal-derivative products are equally present in virtually every aspect of the modern economy, and to declare this mechanism immortal in any area of society is, done conciously or not, declaring the entire system as immoral. In other words, veganism is a cognitive dissonance for someone who otherwise partakes in the exploitative mechanisms of society, either as an employed or as an executive. Veganism has the same moral basis as communism, just focusing on one specific area of capitalist society rather than looking at the big picture. Aaaaaand POST!
Huge shoutout to Jenny! I remember how you said that she doesn‘t feel comfortable in front of the camera and I‘m so happy to see her in your videos. She did amazing! :) Can‘t wait for more fake honey experiments. Keep up the good work!
I have to try really hard to stop myself just talking over her (my fault). I'm so used to blabbering away in front of the camera; she's not at all accustomed to it.
Don‘t be too hard on yourself! You two did amazing! It was really nice to see her coming out of her shell and just like with anything else: It just takes a little time and some practice. :)
I have feint memories of school chemistry where we steam-distilled flowers to get the aromatic oils out. Perhaps you could concentrate the flavours that way without heating them to destruction then adding it to the syrup in a concentrated form..
A little tip. If you want to infuse maximum flavour and aroma from a hot water steep. Then use a thermos/vacuum flask and steep overnight. That will keep the water hotter for longer and ensure a better infusion of the flowers into it. From what i was told the flowers from flowering currant make a better flavour than the actual berries. From experience of trying to make a syrup from the berries in the past i can only assume that's the case as i found those rather bland compared to their commercially grown blackcurrant versions
This is one of the nicest videos I've probably ever watched. I've had a rough week and watching you make fake honey with your soft voice, curiosity, and kindness was just sublime.
That was fascinating. Last year, I cut loads of elderflower stems and left them on white paper to allow bugs to go somewhere else. After shaking and another few hours indoors, I cut of all the flowers and put them into half a large jar of honey for three months or so. I strained the honey and it tasted of elderflowers really strongly. Also, I added some well scrubbed lemon rind strips and it’s wonderful. Over a year later, it still smells of elderflowers! If you do another experiment, perhaps you could add flowers (maybe elderflower or lavender) to your pre-made honey mix and see if you can ‘harvest’ some of that heady summery floral fragrance. Lovely to have Jenny at the party. Thanks for that.
The variety on your channel and your “unfiltered” self (ie making content you want to make instead of just what performs well) is what makes you a wonderful creator. Thanks for keeping me company during a very stressful exam season ❤️
This is amazing, I originally subscribed for the scam baiting episodes,however, I have been loving everything else you do too! What an amazing and diverse channel,thanks for all your hard work,Awesome 👏
Always interesting to see your stuff. We did something like this for a class I took in college many years ago. We did it with Dandelion and clover. The difference is we did the infusion cooler at about 90c. We also brought them to a boil very slowly. And used a lid on the pots. The Dandelion was only ok but the clover tasted like a ok store bought honey. As always keep up the great videos.
@@thomilo44 It was supposedly to keep more flavor in...I think it was because the instructor wanted less mess to clean up if somebody boiled it too hard. 😁
Clover flowers have super sweet tasting nectar and lots of it plus no bad taste while dandelions have way more pollen and way less nectar and taste nasty so Its no surprise to me that the dandelion one wasn't as good as the clover one! I love eating clover flowers and I have 4 different types of clovers growing in my garden and the wood sorrel clover doesn't have good tasting or sweet flowers but instead it has white sour flowers and used to be used as a souring agent during the dark ages while all the other clover flowers have no sourness and taste amazing and super sweet and each petiol is full with nectar!
@@GoldenBoy-et6of Are you eating the green part, or just the petals? Because I found dandelion petals in my yard have a rather pleasant, delicately sweet floral taste... unless you eat the green part.
I've bought that honey before, and it really has almost no flavour. Which is a shame as its more expensive than the cheapest Sainsbury's honey I usually buy, which is surprisingly nice.
@@Automedon2 3 months back, 12 major honey brands were tested in a German Lab to test for adulteration. Results? Only 3 of the 12 brands tested negative for adulteration. Basically, they use this rice and corn syrup which cheat most tests for adulteration in India, and add only 5-10% honey. It's how they get it to be cheap
@@vizprave6721 The amount of adulteration is astounding. For instance, most of the world's oregano is grown in Turkey. Turkey exports much more oregano than they grow, because almost all Turkish oregano is blended with other leaves, such as olive. The same is true with pre-grated parmigiano cheese has cellulose added (to prevent clumping, but they add much more than what is needed). A good amount of olive oil is also blended with other oils even though it is labeled as pure. In one way it isn't such a bad thing because it allows people who can't afford the expensive product to have some sort of facsimile of the real thing. However, that should be clearly stated on the front label of the product, otherwise it's fraud.
Interesting, and I look forward to your culinary experiments with perfumery apparatus! Also, it was good to hear Jenny saying more than usual. Please let Mrs Shrimp know that we'd like to hear more from her.
I recently tried some locally produced honey (from Cowbeech, Sussex) and the flavour is incredible. All the supermarket stuff is super-bland, unless you buy the ridiculously expensive ones.
When you were answering the question "Why do this?", it made me think an alternative name for this channel could be "Why Not?". Definitely seems to sum up the whole ethos.
Pretty much. This channel came about specifically because I kept saying "I wonder if..."; lots of those things, I wrote down, then one day I just decided it was time to start finding out.
I don't know if you can do that due to caramelization. But one solution to boiling off the aromas would be to over reduce the syrup, so that adding the infusion will bring you back up to the right concentration (or slightly over).
It's probably possible to continue reducing it on a lower heat - the only real reason for boiling hard is that the boiling point is a good indicator of the attained concentration, but it should be possible to boil to 114 Celsius, weigh the pan and contents, then continue reducing at lower heat, then weigh again and make up the lost weight with flower infusion
I love these types of videos. I’m so tempted to make my own fake honey now. I’m vegan so it would be super cool if I could figure out how to make my own fake honey!
What a timely video, I just learned of golden syrup for the first time yesterday and got a bottle today, yet unopened. I was surprised you didn't split it into three batches, one with a mixture of both infusions.
There really wasn't enough substance for that. If both would have turned out to be good he still could've created several blends and figure out what he most likes.
Golden syrup is awesome. Hope you are enjoying. Goes particularly well with battered things, such as pineapple. And makes a great top for a steamed sponge pudding.
What a fascinating experiment! So nice to hear from Mrs Shrimp. 😀 And one of your end products was even better than the real honey. 🤣. Now I want to try some golden syrup.
Pretty amusing that there are people who are still puzzled with stuff like what you're doing: it's the food experiments like this (also vegan black pudding, foraged herb seitan et cetera) that are always the stuff I look forward to on this channel.
I guess it's the people that only want the scambaiting? Pretty much 80% of Atomic Shrimp is divers content that boils down to: "let's do something random and see what happens"
This was indeed interesting. It would be good to see a sequel to this some time in the future: to see how much better you could make it with the knowledge you gained in this video.
Could you, instead of boiling the flowers, marinate a big bunch of them in the sugar syrup for a few days and filter them out? It would probably be WAY more effort than it's worth, but that way you could maybe go around heating the flowers and having to get water out afterwards. Love the video and the idea to simply just try out a theory.
I've never seen anyone fork a muffin before (oooer) ... that's a really great solution for tearing them apart before toasting - tearing is always better than slicing :D As for the fake honey ... the real question is whether it keeps the peas on your knife or not :D
If you want to emulate real honey, use room-temperature evaporation, start with a fructose-based sugar like corn sugar, add a small amount of sea salt high in phosphorus, and beta-amylase enzyme. Also, make sure not to include any green parts of the plant. In the case of meadowsweet, dry the flowers then de-stem them. Elderflower works better, and you can buy it at any brew shop if you don't have it growing near you. A properly made synthetic will be crystal clear, with no yellowing at all, so you get the taste but not the color unless you add color intentionally. By the time you've done all that, real honey ends up being cheaper. Mead-makers will sometimes do this for their primary fermentation because honey is a natural product and extremely variable. So if you want a commercial meadery that produces a consistent product over millions of bottles, year over year, you either need to be able to manage huge tanks of honey (think grain silo scale, worth tens of millions) or produce a synthetic. Then when you finish the primary ferment, you back-sweeten it with real honey to get more of the subtle flavors and aromas. And this would be considered "shit mead", the kind you buy from a liquor store, not what you would find in a proper meadery. But the flavor is consistent, which is an essential quality to build a commercial brand. As a beekeeper and mead maker, I can tell you, use real honey. It makes a huge difference. But you can get very close to the taste with a synthetic. Synthetic-based meads however don't age as well.
I made some fake honey over Christmas when I was making some candied orange slices. It was just the left over syrup from the orange slices and few cardamom pods and drops of orange blossom essence that were in there for flavour. It really was very similar to runny honey and was great on toast!
I heard of a good fake honey variant, where you use the young shoots of fir trees, those thingies, that are fresh and lime green in spring, but i haven't had a chance this year to test it...
When I make spruce syrup, I just layer thinly sliced lemons, sugar and spruce shoots in a jar and let the sugar melt from the liquid in the lemon and spruce over the course of a few weeks in a sunny window. Maybe that would be a way?
hey shrimp really great video today, i just have to say that watching you is like having that grand parent i never had as my grandma died before i was born and i can barely remember my grandad before he died and the dad side aren't the best kind of people so i never really had grandparents growing up so watching you is like having a youtube grandparent, thank you and keep up the great work.
I made a lot of elderberry flower sirup and I can say the vegetable taste is possibly from the stalks. A good way to prevent the taste is by hangig mostly just the flowers into the infusion, which (in case of elderberry) is usually a mix of lemon juice and water, that is then left to sit in the fridge for one or two days. The cut surfaces of the stalks seem to cause the vegetable taste. The sugar is then added directly into the infusion and boiled down.
this video has been one of the most thorough step by step guide to get an arbitrary result displayed in a very british fashion at the end xD I love your channel, been watching for years, yoive definitely cemented yourself in my books as a local legend
I once tried making it with dandelions flowers and it was really nice. The main differences from what I remember was that I used way more flower, I used only petals and I left them in the water for 24 h and then strained whole "juice" through a cloth so I could squeeze as much juice from wet petals as I could.
I wonder if drying the flowers before infusing them would help dial down the vegetal flavor. In my experience, infusing fresh herbs/flowers leans more toward vegetable broth than herbal tea (which of course often contains dried flowers). Loved this video; everything about it was so delightfully British.
I like sugar for breakfast! My dad is from Scotland and he likes his Golden Syrup. I love the thick smooth creaminess of it off the spoon. Yes I have a sweet tooth, well the ones that have not been turned into golden crowns... lol
So, I’d recommend infusing the the flowers for at least 8/12hours (over night). Add petals with water (adverage: 1cup.per 35g. Or 1lr for 150g of petals) and light heat (like 2 out of 10, maybe 3 for heat) for 15, then jar over night. I’ve even accidentally done 36hrs and when I opened the jar it smelled like honey! Then you slowly bring to a boil again, with a sliced whole lemon and add sugar, for 15-30mins (till a third has evaporated). I can’t go back to regular syrup and honey now. Haha! Also, more watery “honey” is easier for baking too. Thanks for your video! I’ll have to give thistle a try! 🖤
I'm looking forward to you moving forward with this experiment, is there anyway that you could obtain the 'oils' from the flowers.....if such thing exists? Would that work a little better than the flower infusion?
Regarding the "preserving the flower flavor", maybe you could create the infusion, and then boil away the water, but a low pressure, so it boils at a really low temperature, by using a vacuum pump. My guess is that flavor get altered by hi temperature. Once the infusion is really low on water super concentrated, you could just add it to the syrup and no need to boil away extra water, maybe heat a little to mix well.
You have to do a low temperature infusion of the flowers, to keep the aromas intact. Concentrate the syrup beforehand. Then a low temperature pasteurization, 65 c for a longer period.
121 soft boil will help thicken that half the lemon juice and steep your flowers in a pot with water on the stove for 30 minutes constant heat will help pull the flavors from the flowers 💐... I hope this helps you
@@joxering9528 Plus, you're not paying the whole supply chain, so the beekeeper gets a bigger cut and you get better and fresher honey. There's often a selection of honeys from different plants as well. Some also sell homemade mead and honey liquor (called Bärenfang - "bear catcher" in German).
We used to make elderflower Sirup ourselves at home and for that we would let the elderflower steep in cold water for 3 days. And we used a lot of flowers. After that we would heat the liquid and stir in a lot of sugar. Of course like that you don't end up with fake honey cause it's still sucrose but maybe the steeping method helps. Also the vegetal taste of the thistle one might be from not only using flower petals. Weeds like that often have this flavour
apparently we made fake honey in chemistry class but we not measure the temperature and add extra caramel as we made colorless sirup first out of sugar and sugar (+acid).
If/when you have another go at this, it might be worth investigating the effect of dehydrating the flower brew rather than having a second boil. I'd imagine you could dehydrate the brew, then use the "residue" left which would contain the flowery flavors. I don't know if that would also drive off the aroma of the flowers, but it would certainly be gentler than boiling at 114C.
I remember a neighbour made honey from clover. We were gifted a jar of it and it was appreciated by the lot of us. We didn't mind the odd critter in it because the insects were about midge-sized. I guess that doesn't count as vegan, but that's ok because we're not.
You might try adding the appropriate amount of a strong flower tisane to sugar to get the right consistency and then pressure canning to get the sugar to dissolve.
At least in my country there are already multiple producers of this, with a variety of different flavors. Even some local stores picked it up. It's quite expensive, but actually tastes like flowers.
@thereisnochoiceleft Unfortunately a lot of refined cane sugar in the US is still made using charcoal derived from imported animal bones, so not even vegetarian never mind vegan :( I'm sure there are brands that don't use this process though?
I work for sugar company and the process you used was similar to how we make golden syrup. Another method you may consider is to boil under vacuum which lowers the boiling point and may preserve the flavours you are after.
I've made faux honey, and if I recall correctly, I used a touch of lemon, sugar, steeped Earl Grey tea in 1 cup of water, a bare touch of vanilla, and 1 stick pack of real powdered apple juice drink crystals. It made a very tasty honey tasting syrup that was also colored like honey.
This was interesting, I'd imagine boiling the flowers ruined most of the flavour but was probably also for safety and sterilization. I wonder if the inverted but still hot (Above 100c) syrup could be poured over washed flowers and left to steep/cool and then strained off into jars. Might preserve more of the floral notes
I'm glad you mentioned making honey from dandelions, as that's the traditional way we used to do it in Poland years back. We'd go out and pick up basket upon basket of it and my late great grandmother would turn it into honey just so I wasn't left out (was allergic to bee honey). However, I never thought of using flowers other than dandelions to do the same thing, so I may give it a whirl at some point and see how it goes. Great video as always
I think to make an actual artificial honey you'd need to find a way to efficiently extract nectar from flowers, then invert and reduce the nectar. It seems bees use diastase, invertase, and glucose oxidase, so presumably if you collected a quantity of nectar (maybe some pollen for good measure?) and introduced those enzymes before reducing or dehydrating, you'd get somethin approximating honey. That said, probably a faster approximation would just be to flavor invert syrup with dried white mulberries (which taste a good bit like honey).
Though having never tasted pure flower nectar, I don't know how much of the flavor of honey comes from the nectar itself as opposed to the pollen or the enzymatic digestion by the bees. If it was the pollen, you may be able to get a good bit of that easily by shaking certain flowers in a flour sifter?
There are some flowers where you can get a little taste of nectar - typically tubular flowers such as honeysuckle and white deadnettle - the flower can be detached and you can suck out a tiny drop of nectar from the base. I've always found it to be just blandly sweet - I think the flower species definitely makes *some* difference (because, say heather honey is different from honey where the bees have been visiting, say citrus trees), but I think the essential 'honey' flavour actually comes from the bees (bees can be fed with pure sugar syrup and they will still manage to make something that tastes a bit like honey)
I would try a double boiler or adding the flowers direct into the inverted sugar syrup and straining it after it cools down. But I really liked the experiment. Well done!
Decided to open up a jar I got from my neighbors who keep bees and have a taste while watching from all the way across the pond. It's some of the most flavorful I've ever had. I only wish I could share some with you and try your creations as well!
Really interesting something to try out possibly. I would try steeping more flowers (cutting off just the individual flower heads) overnight and use that steeped flower water to boil the sugar. Thinking about possibly drying the flowers as dried herbs have a stronger taste than fresh herbs. Really enjoyed this vid, now I want a muffin!
Pulling the green bits off should eliminate the "vegetal" flavor from the thistle extraction. The whitish bits inside should be kept. And I'd do what a commenter above mentioned; use the invert sugar syrup as a "solvent" for the extraction instead of just plain water. Heat it to 114C as before, pour it over the flower petals, then strain the flowers out using butter muslin while it's still somewhat warm.
I know that honey tastes of the flowers the bees collected the nectar from but it also tastes of Honey rather than golden syrup. So i wonder if honey tastes of bee spit or bee digestive juices? Recently i bought some natural essences from Uncle Roy! They are very expensive but very good( you only need a very small ammount if you but the super strength.) I notice they do a honey essence which is vegan? Perhaps you could try preparing the syrup first adding your own extract, and then adding a bit of honey essence to enhance it?
It is coming from "the mouth of unexperienced", but I do believe sugar infused vanilla syrup is made through boiling vanilla beans in sugar syrup. Maybe that would do with flowers in your case
Please give us an update with some tweaks like not boiling after mixing the flower concentration and only using the flower parts in the purple flower (not the green bits, that may have tasted like veg) It would be really interesting
Commercial honey is sometimes mixed with corn syrup so that companies can sell more. The regulations of what can be classified as honey is pretty broad which is why they can still label it honey. In my experience local honey is generally better than store bought because you know that it’s pure
It's illegal to do that and sell it as pure honey (at least here in the UK), but I'm sure it happens due to the international nature of the supply chain, and the difficulty of discerning pure honey from that which has been adulterated. Ultimately, even though I think such adulteration is wrong and should be stamped out, people don't like to admit that even real honey is basically just sugar syrup with a very small amount of enzymes and other stuff in it
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I like to imagine you did all this while wearing a black and yellow striped onesie
Or a yellow with black one
Why you gotta bee like that?
With a hood thats got antenna
@@EggBastion oof, that one stings
Buzz off the lot of you
"Look what they need to mimic even a fraction of our power!" -Bees
ahhhhhhhh it happned
Nice meme
Honey, aka Bee Puke :P
@@xander1052 When they regurgitate the honey, they add all sorts of natural antibiotics to it. Fun fact: you can use honey as a liquid bandage.
@@michaelbianchi22 the issue I see is that it just tastes too good.
I've made floral inverted syrups before (mostly lavender). I don't boil the flowers prior to putting them in the syrup. I just bring the sugar up to temperature, toss the flowers in, turn off the heat, let it cool, then strain it into jars.
I was going to suggest this. It makes sense but I haven't tried it. Perhaps toss the flowers in only after the sugar goes down to 100 C, worth trying either way.
Does that method give the floral flavour that boiling them first didn’t achieve?
Woops! I just commented the same thing. Great minds think alike and all that.
I agree, and for the best result you need a mix of flowers.
but shouldnt the other method extract more taste because of osmotic pressure? I like the idea though
If you just have a gas hob, a trick I learned to even out the heat is put a flat cast iron pan on the hob and then the pot on top of it. It distributes the heat a bit more evenly like you would get on an electric stove
Brilliant, I will remember that tip
Yeah, I didn't think of that but it's good
@@AtomicShrimp Just wanna say loved the vid
Why is that necessary, if you have a good quality pan? The metal should be conductive enough to even out on its own.
His issue with the gas stove was that the flame was heating the sides of the pot as well.
@@JohnDlugosz the answer to your question is in your question lol. Not everyone has good quality pans and pots. Not everyone can afford them. This method ensures that the flame is not directly on your pot, thereby evening out the heat. Ive found It's especially useful with steaming rice where the direct flame would cause the rice to stick to the bottom of the pot and burn. If you do this, it doesnt stick and the rice is steamed evenly.
This is an OLD family recipe passed down through my family. We use purple clover, white clover, and fireweed. This video absolutely made my day, week, and year!! Open comments for my recipe. 🐝
Our recipe:
30 purple clover flower's
60 white clover flowers
30 fireweed flowers
10 cups sugar
2.5 cups water
1tsp alum
Boil water, alum and sugar until the liquid dissolves into liquid
Remove from heat
Add flower's and let set 10min
Strain out the flower's.
Done!
@@cantsay whats alum?
Omg same
@@mhx5071 It's a mineral - but there seems to be several types so I'm unsure to which one was used in that recipe.
@@cantsay Can I switch out alum with citric acid?
I can see it now, "I can't believe it's not Honey!", from Atomic Shrimp's not-honey farm. You'll make millions!
It's also vegan! (If you're hard-core vegan)
@@cantsay (assuming veganism as a philosophy based on the opposition to the exploitation of animals, rather than simply a dietary choice)
Honey is also vegan if you do a little semantic gymnastics. I mean, yes, honey is made by bees, but it's not exactly a fluid produced by their innards like for example milk is in the case of mammals. And I'm sure that at least in western countries, bees are aptly compensated for their work in the form of a guarateed annual 20 days of paid holiday as well as paid parental leave and covered health insurance and educational expenses.
And even if you _do_ view any product that is in any way derived from animals to be inherently anti-vegan, shouldn't that count for humans too? At which point you're actually putting yourself in a rather difficult situation as it basically becomes impossible to interract with society in any way shape or form. Ooooor, you could define yourself as a communist and say that any product derived from the exploitation of others is inherently immoral, BUT still acknowledge that it's impossible to live in the present day without partaking in the capitalist system to one degree or another, which by the very same logic invalidates veganism by the same grounds; the logic veganism bases itself on, when taken to its conclusion, results in complete abstaination from society as a whole, as the very same exploitative mechanisms that enables the mass production of animal-derivative products are equally present in virtually every aspect of the modern economy, and to declare this mechanism immortal in any area of society is, done conciously or not, declaring the entire system as immoral. In other words, veganism is a cognitive dissonance for someone who otherwise partakes in the exploitative mechanisms of society, either as an employed or as an executive. Veganism has the same moral basis as communism, just focusing on one specific area of capitalist society rather than looking at the big picture. Aaaaaand POST!
I think you are over estimating the earning power of honey, it's like a couple of quid for a jar of the bee made stuff 🤣😂🤣🤦♂️
@@Rob17Cotton Give it a few more years for climate change to create peak demand pricing...
No Certificate of Inoppolity required.
See, what you're missing is you have to regurgitate it back up and THEN, it's honey.
Huge shoutout to Jenny!
I remember how you said that she doesn‘t feel comfortable in front of the camera and I‘m so happy to see her in your videos.
She did amazing! :)
Can‘t wait for more fake honey experiments. Keep up the good work!
I have to try really hard to stop myself just talking over her (my fault). I'm so used to blabbering away in front of the camera; she's not at all accustomed to it.
Don‘t be too hard on yourself! You two did amazing! It was really nice to see her coming out of her shell and just like with anything else: It just takes a little time and some practice. :)
I have feint memories of school chemistry where we steam-distilled flowers to get the aromatic oils out. Perhaps you could concentrate the flavours that way without heating them to destruction then adding it to the syrup in a concentrated form..
I have a Croatian friend with a still for lavender and for rosemary, he also has a big still for brandy, loza and slivovic.
You could probably learn a lot from the gin wizards.
I wouldn’t say no to a T-shirt that had something like “Proud Owner of Glarded Funds”
I acknowledge that’s off topic for this video…
@@davidk8380 appreciated regardless
I'd totally buy a "CoinSquirt: Liquid Finance" shirt
@@Mekuso8 I think he has one for sale...
might be wrong tho
On the backside of the shirt: "Ask me about my tax clode"
A little tip. If you want to infuse maximum flavour and aroma from a hot water steep. Then use a thermos/vacuum flask and steep overnight. That will keep the water hotter for longer and ensure a better infusion of the flowers into it. From what i was told the flowers from flowering currant make a better flavour than the actual berries. From experience of trying to make a syrup from the berries in the past i can only assume that's the case as i found those rather bland compared to their commercially grown blackcurrant versions
This is one of the nicest videos I've probably ever watched. I've had a rough week and watching you make fake honey with your soft voice, curiosity, and kindness was just sublime.
hope you're doing better these days friend!
That was fascinating. Last year, I cut loads of elderflower stems and left them on white paper to allow bugs to go somewhere else. After shaking and another few hours indoors, I cut of all the flowers and put them into half a large jar of honey for three months or so.
I strained the honey and it tasted of elderflowers really strongly. Also, I added some well scrubbed lemon rind strips and it’s wonderful. Over a year later, it still smells of elderflowers!
If you do another experiment, perhaps you could add flowers (maybe elderflower or lavender) to your pre-made honey mix and see if you can ‘harvest’ some of that heady summery floral fragrance.
Lovely to have Jenny at the party. Thanks for that.
The variety on your channel and your “unfiltered” self (ie making content you want to make instead of just what performs well) is what makes you a wonderful creator. Thanks for keeping me company during a very stressful exam season ❤️
You are one of my favorite youtubers right now. The diversity of content and the shared interest seem to never end. Cant wait to see you hit 1 mil!!!
This is amazing, I originally subscribed for the scam baiting episodes,however, I have been loving everything else you do too!
What an amazing and diverse channel,thanks for all your hard work,Awesome 👏
Always interesting to see your stuff. We did something like this for a class I took in college many years ago. We did it with Dandelion and clover. The difference is we did the infusion cooler at about 90c. We also brought them to a boil very slowly. And used a lid on the pots. The Dandelion was only ok but the clover tasted like a ok store bought honey. As always keep up the great videos.
Why keep the lid on? Isn't part of the intention to thicken up the syrup?
@@thomilo44 It was supposedly to keep more flavor in...I think it was because the instructor wanted less mess to clean up if somebody boiled it too hard. 😁
Clover flowers have super sweet tasting nectar and lots of it plus no bad taste while dandelions have way more pollen and way less nectar and taste nasty so Its no surprise to me that the dandelion one wasn't as good as the clover one! I love eating clover flowers and I have 4 different types of clovers growing in my garden and the wood sorrel clover doesn't have good tasting or sweet flowers but instead it has white sour flowers and used to be used as a souring agent during the dark ages while all the other clover flowers have no sourness and taste amazing and super sweet and each petiol is full with nectar!
@@GoldenBoy-et6of Are you eating the green part, or just the petals? Because I found dandelion petals in my yard have a rather pleasant, delicately sweet floral taste... unless you eat the green part.
I've bought that honey before, and it really has almost no flavour. Which is a shame as its more expensive than the cheapest Sainsbury's honey I usually buy, which is surprisingly nice.
Try Extra Special limited edition Spanish forest honey from ASDA (other brands are no doubt available). I find it very tasty :)
I suspect that some of the honey from India is diluted with sugar syrup.
I've had the very exclusive Thunderf00t honey.
@@Automedon2 3 months back, 12 major honey brands were tested in a German Lab to test for adulteration. Results? Only 3 of the 12 brands tested negative for adulteration. Basically, they use this rice and corn syrup which cheat most tests for adulteration in India, and add only 5-10% honey. It's how they get it to be cheap
@@vizprave6721 The amount of adulteration is astounding. For instance, most of the world's oregano is grown in Turkey. Turkey exports much more oregano than they grow, because almost all Turkish oregano is blended with other leaves, such as olive. The same is true with pre-grated parmigiano cheese has cellulose added (to prevent clumping, but they add much more than what is needed). A good amount of olive oil is also blended with other oils even though it is labeled as pure. In one way it isn't such a bad thing because it allows people who can't afford the expensive product to have some sort of facsimile of the real thing. However, that should be clearly stated on the front label of the product, otherwise it's fraud.
Interesting, and I look forward to your culinary experiments with perfumery apparatus! Also, it was good to hear Jenny saying more than usual. Please let Mrs Shrimp know that we'd like to hear more from her.
Its nice to hear Jenny thoughts. But no pressure if she doesn't want to speak more :-)
So all those prison movies where the prisoners use boiling water and sugar they are actually just making fake honey from wildflowers, how nice.
What films have you been watching?
Toilet honey.
I recently tried some locally produced honey (from Cowbeech, Sussex) and the flavour is incredible. All the supermarket stuff is super-bland, unless you buy the ridiculously expensive ones.
It was nice to see Jenny again, I love her voice.
for better or worse, she reminds me of my mother
@@asmrpillow457 you are lucky, she reminds me NOTHING of my mother. I love her, but, we never really got along😐
Another Atomic Shrimp cooking video is just what I needed right now. Thank you.
When you were answering the question "Why do this?", it made me think an alternative name for this channel could be "Why Not?". Definitely seems to sum up the whole ethos.
Pretty much. This channel came about specifically because I kept saying "I wonder if..."; lots of those things, I wrote down, then one day I just decided it was time to start finding out.
I don't know if you can do that due to caramelization. But one solution to boiling off the aromas would be to over reduce the syrup, so that adding the infusion will bring you back up to the right concentration (or slightly over).
It's probably possible to continue reducing it on a lower heat - the only real reason for boiling hard is that the boiling point is a good indicator of the attained concentration, but it should be possible to boil to 114 Celsius, weigh the pan and contents, then continue reducing at lower heat, then weigh again and make up the lost weight with flower infusion
I love these types of videos. I’m so tempted to make my own fake honey now. I’m vegan so it would be super cool if I could figure out how to make my own fake honey!
Maybe try putting the infusion in a dehydrator, it should drive off most of the liquid without bringing it to a boil.
That's also pretty close to what bees do to make honey. I think I'll have to give that a shot when I try making some of this.
Just based on the ingredients, I feel like thistle be a great video.
th-cam.com/video/pSg_6T8HrRg/w-d-xo.html
I see what you did there
What a timely video, I just learned of golden syrup for the first time yesterday and got a bottle today, yet unopened. I was surprised you didn't split it into three batches, one with a mixture of both infusions.
There really wasn't enough substance for that. If both would have turned out to be good he still could've created several blends and figure out what he most likes.
Golden syrup is awesome. Hope you are enjoying. Goes particularly well with battered things, such as pineapple. And makes a great top for a steamed sponge pudding.
What a fascinating experiment! So nice to hear from Mrs Shrimp. 😀 And one of your end products was even better than the real honey. 🤣. Now I want to try some golden syrup.
To be fair, I think it's only because the real honey was a poor, very commercial product.
This makes me wanna go out bush and try this. New Zealand is loaded with safe fragrant flowers 😁
I want to try with some Manuka
The naki
Thank you for having so much vegan content on your channel, as well as the hilarious scambaiting videos.
Pretty amusing that there are people who are still puzzled with stuff like what you're doing: it's the food experiments like this (also vegan black pudding, foraged herb seitan et cetera) that are always the stuff I look forward to on this channel.
I guess it's the people that only want the scambaiting? Pretty much 80% of Atomic Shrimp is divers content that boils down to: "let's do something random and see what happens"
This was indeed interesting. It would be good to see a sequel to this some time in the future: to see how much better you could make it with the knowledge you gained in this video.
I like how creative you are with food, especially the type you can forage.
Yes, please try it once more with everything you suggested at the end of the video. I totally agree with what you said there!
Could you, instead of boiling the flowers, marinate a big bunch of them in the sugar syrup for a few days and filter them out? It would probably be WAY more effort than it's worth, but that way you could maybe go around heating the flowers and having to get water out afterwards.
Love the video and the idea to simply just try out a theory.
Apparently others thought the same thing. Should read the comments first.
I've never seen anyone fork a muffin before (oooer) ... that's a really great solution for tearing them apart before toasting - tearing is always better than slicing :D
As for the fake honey ... the real question is whether it keeps the peas on your knife or not :D
If you want to emulate real honey, use room-temperature evaporation, start with a fructose-based sugar like corn sugar, add a small amount of sea salt high in phosphorus, and beta-amylase enzyme. Also, make sure not to include any green parts of the plant. In the case of meadowsweet, dry the flowers then de-stem them. Elderflower works better, and you can buy it at any brew shop if you don't have it growing near you. A properly made synthetic will be crystal clear, with no yellowing at all, so you get the taste but not the color unless you add color intentionally. By the time you've done all that, real honey ends up being cheaper.
Mead-makers will sometimes do this for their primary fermentation because honey is a natural product and extremely variable. So if you want a commercial meadery that produces a consistent product over millions of bottles, year over year, you either need to be able to manage huge tanks of honey (think grain silo scale, worth tens of millions) or produce a synthetic. Then when you finish the primary ferment, you back-sweeten it with real honey to get more of the subtle flavors and aromas. And this would be considered "shit mead", the kind you buy from a liquor store, not what you would find in a proper meadery. But the flavor is consistent, which is an essential quality to build a commercial brand.
As a beekeeper and mead maker, I can tell you, use real honey. It makes a huge difference. But you can get very close to the taste with a synthetic. Synthetic-based meads however don't age as well.
I made some fake honey over Christmas when I was making some candied orange slices. It was just the left over syrup from the orange slices and few cardamom pods and drops of orange blossom essence that were in there for flavour. It really was very similar to runny honey and was great on toast!
"Come on over to Shrimp's Real Fake Honey! Tastes like honey, smells like honey, sticks like honey, but it isn't honey!"
i can't believe it's not honey
I heard of a good fake honey variant, where you use the young shoots of fir trees, those thingies, that are fresh and lime green in spring, but i haven't had a chance this year to test it...
When I make spruce syrup, I just layer thinly sliced lemons, sugar and spruce shoots in a jar and let the sugar melt from the liquid in the lemon and spruce over the course of a few weeks in a sunny window. Maybe that would be a way?
hey shrimp really great video today, i just have to say that watching you is like having that grand parent i never had as my grandma died before i was born and i can barely remember my grandad before he died and the dad side aren't the best kind of people so i never really had grandparents growing up so watching you is like having a youtube grandparent, thank you and keep up the great work.
And next day giant bees with cricketbats show up on the doorstep.
"We 'ear you've been tryin to put our fellows out on the dole ya scab!"
I made a lot of elderberry flower sirup and I can say the vegetable taste is possibly from the stalks. A good way to prevent the taste is by hangig mostly just the flowers into the infusion, which (in case of elderberry) is usually a mix of lemon juice and water, that is then left to sit in the fridge for one or two days. The cut surfaces of the stalks seem to cause the vegetable taste. The sugar is then added directly into the infusion and boiled down.
How come there was no toast tax? me and the wife were eagerly looking forward to this and it never happened!
Most under-rated channel on YT. Come for scam-baiting, stay for the honey recipes, jerky trials, sausage tastings, and nature vids. Truly inspiring!
I'm new to the channel. Fantastic content and I learn something with every video.
this video has been one of the most thorough step by step guide to get an arbitrary result displayed in a very british fashion at the end xD I love your channel, been watching for years, yoive definitely cemented yourself in my books as a local legend
What I think happened was that the fragrant compounds have a lower breakdown temperature than the boiling point of the sugars.
Yes. When making mead, you'll lose the flavors of the honey if you boil it. That's why it's generally better to stir the honey into warm water.
I once tried making it with dandelions flowers and it was really nice.
The main differences from what I remember was that I used way more flower, I used only petals and I left them in the water for 24 h and then strained whole "juice" through a cloth so I could squeeze as much juice from wet petals as I could.
This makes me think of how I’ve made dandelion syrup before and it tastes almost exactly like honey.
I wonder if drying the flowers before infusing them would help dial down the vegetal flavor. In my experience, infusing fresh herbs/flowers leans more toward vegetable broth than herbal tea (which of course often contains dried flowers). Loved this video; everything about it was so delightfully British.
I like sugar for breakfast! My dad is from Scotland and he likes his Golden Syrup. I love the thick smooth creaminess of it off the spoon. Yes I have a sweet tooth, well the ones that have not been turned into golden crowns... lol
So, I’d recommend infusing the the flowers for at least 8/12hours (over night). Add petals with water (adverage: 1cup.per 35g. Or 1lr for 150g of petals) and light heat (like 2 out of 10, maybe 3 for heat) for 15, then jar over night. I’ve even accidentally done 36hrs and when I opened the jar it smelled like honey!
Then you slowly bring to a boil again, with a sliced whole lemon and add sugar, for 15-30mins (till a third has evaporated).
I can’t go back to regular syrup and honey now. Haha! Also, more watery “honey” is easier for baking too.
Thanks for your video! I’ll have to give thistle a try! 🖤
I'm looking forward to you moving forward with this experiment, is there anyway that you could obtain the 'oils' from the flowers.....if such thing exists? Would that work a little better than the flower infusion?
Regarding the "preserving the flower flavor", maybe you could create the infusion, and then boil away the water, but a low pressure, so it boils at a really low temperature, by using a vacuum pump. My guess is that flavor get altered by hi temperature. Once the infusion is really low on water super concentrated, you could just add it to the syrup and no need to boil away extra water, maybe heat a little to mix well.
You have to do a low temperature infusion of the flowers, to keep the aromas intact. Concentrate the syrup beforehand. Then a low temperature pasteurization, 65 c for a longer period.
121 soft boil will help thicken that half the lemon juice and steep your flowers in a pot with water on the stove for 30 minutes constant heat will help pull the flavors from the flowers 💐... I hope this helps you
"We're having sugar for breakfast!" - America
i absolutely love the curiosity. i think we could do with more people having that spirit.
Considering how much honey is sold compared to the amount of bee's on the planet... I suspect most honey sold is not honey.
Well you can look at the label and look
(Tip)
Farmers markets have real honey most of the time
There is/was a big scandal around some honeys actually just being imitation honey/syrup so yeah. You're not wrong.
@@MazTheMeh16 pretty sure they are legally required to tell you its origin at least here
@@joxering9528 Plus, you're not paying the whole supply chain, so the beekeeper gets a bigger cut and you get better and fresher honey. There's often a selection of honeys from different plants as well. Some also sell homemade mead and honey liquor (called Bärenfang - "bear catcher" in German).
@@joxering9528 Laws only matter if they're enforced.
We used to make elderflower Sirup ourselves at home and for that we would let the elderflower steep in cold water for 3 days. And we used a lot of flowers. After that we would heat the liquid and stir in a lot of sugar. Of course like that you don't end up with fake honey cause it's still sucrose but maybe the steeping method helps. Also the vegetal taste of the thistle one might be from not only using flower petals. Weeds like that often have this flavour
I love the picture-in-picture editing!
These are my favourite videos of yours, the “Making fake ______ out of ______” ones. I find them very fascinating and educational
"We're having sugar for breakfast!"
Huh, I coulda sworn you *weren't* an American...
apparently we made fake honey in chemistry class but we not measure the temperature and add extra caramel as we made colorless sirup first out of sugar and sugar (+acid).
You might say this is forged foraged food. 😀
If/when you have another go at this, it might be worth investigating the effect of dehydrating the flower brew rather than having a second boil. I'd imagine you could dehydrate the brew, then use the "residue" left which would contain the flowery flavors. I don't know if that would also drive off the aroma of the flowers, but it would certainly be gentler than boiling at 114C.
I remember a neighbour made honey from clover. We were gifted a jar of it and it was appreciated by the lot of us. We didn't mind the odd critter in it because the insects were about midge-sized. I guess that doesn't count as vegan, but that's ok because we're not.
You might try adding the appropriate amount of a strong flower tisane to sugar to get the right consistency and then pressure canning to get the sugar to dissolve.
Heeeeyyyyy, this is so cool. You could sell it as ‘vegan honey’
I said this but my wife informed me the sugar is probably not vegan friendly
Ffs vegans don’t eat honey? Some people need a bullet
At least in my country there are already multiple producers of this, with a variety of different flavors. Even some local stores picked it up. It's quite expensive, but actually tastes like flowers.
@@mrfavus Sugar in the UK (and most of the rest of Europe I would imagine) is not made with bone char, so in this case it'd be fine. Americans, YMMV.
@thereisnochoiceleft Unfortunately a lot of refined cane sugar in the US is still made using charcoal derived from imported animal bones, so not even vegetarian never mind vegan :(
I'm sure there are brands that don't use this process though?
I work for sugar company and the process you used was similar to how we make golden syrup. Another method you may consider is to boil under vacuum which lowers the boiling point and may preserve the flavours you are after.
A bit difficult to achieve in a normal kitchen - how about stirring in the infusion after the syrup has cooled down just enough?
I hear Eva, bless her.
I've made faux honey, and if I recall correctly, I used a touch of lemon, sugar, steeped Earl Grey tea in 1 cup of water, a bare touch of vanilla, and 1 stick pack of real powdered apple juice drink crystals. It made a very tasty honey tasting syrup that was also colored like honey.
This was interesting, I'd imagine boiling the flowers ruined most of the flavour but was probably also for safety and sterilization. I wonder if the inverted but still hot (Above 100c) syrup could be poured over washed flowers and left to steep/cool and then strained off into jars. Might preserve more of the floral notes
I'm glad you mentioned making honey from dandelions, as that's the traditional way we used to do it in Poland years back. We'd go out and pick up basket upon basket of it and my late great grandmother would turn it into honey just so I wasn't left out (was allergic to bee honey). However, I never thought of using flowers other than dandelions to do the same thing, so I may give it a whirl at some point and see how it goes. Great video as always
I thought this was a Nile red video
not even remotely similar.
@@fitness3447 Just because of the thumbnail
I think the heating of the inufusion is cooking off the aromatic compounds of the flowers. Maybe also increase the volume of flowers used?
Bees: “Look at what these humans have to do to mimic a fraction of our power.”
If you look at this one human to one bee, the bee would not be able to make this amount in its life time
You can try steam distillation on these flowers to capture the flower aroma without destroying it
Yes, an ethical vegan honey!
Very cool video. I knew I'd be hitting the thumbs up from the start. Curiosity is a great reason to try out a little project.
Damn i clicked this one thinking it said free beer not bee free. I feel silly now. Great video
Oh damn, is that what it said? I don't think I'll bother watching the video then...😉
I just hit refresh and there's a new atomic shrimp video! I was just about to watch some older videos
Hello
We call honey in lithuania: Medus
@@timrodriges7200 interesting
We call honey in Russia beeblyatt
@@timrodriges7200 We call is Med in Slovakia so it has to be from the same word
I think to make an actual artificial honey you'd need to find a way to efficiently extract nectar from flowers, then invert and reduce the nectar. It seems bees use diastase, invertase, and glucose oxidase, so presumably if you collected a quantity of nectar (maybe some pollen for good measure?) and introduced those enzymes before reducing or dehydrating, you'd get somethin approximating honey.
That said, probably a faster approximation would just be to flavor invert syrup with dried white mulberries (which taste a good bit like honey).
Though having never tasted pure flower nectar, I don't know how much of the flavor of honey comes from the nectar itself as opposed to the pollen or the enzymatic digestion by the bees. If it was the pollen, you may be able to get a good bit of that easily by shaking certain flowers in a flour sifter?
There are some flowers where you can get a little taste of nectar - typically tubular flowers such as honeysuckle and white deadnettle - the flower can be detached and you can suck out a tiny drop of nectar from the base. I've always found it to be just blandly sweet - I think the flower species definitely makes *some* difference (because, say heather honey is different from honey where the bees have been visiting, say citrus trees), but I think the essential 'honey' flavour actually comes from the bees (bees can be fed with pure sugar syrup and they will still manage to make something that tastes a bit like honey)
yes, but you can't beat proper raw unpasturised honey...
I would try a double boiler or adding the flowers direct into the inverted sugar syrup and straining it after it cools down. But I really liked the experiment. Well done!
Finally we can break the stranglehold of the Bee cartel!
Decided to open up a jar I got from my neighbors who keep bees and have a taste while watching from all the way across the pond. It's some of the most flavorful I've ever had. I only wish I could share some with you and try your creations as well!
I'm high on shrooms. How did I end up here? Not complainung.
i am high on filipendulas
Are your shrooms glarded?
I've landrd. I think.
Really interesting something to try out possibly. I would try steeping more flowers (cutting off just the individual flower heads) overnight and use that steeped flower water to boil the sugar. Thinking about possibly drying the flowers as dried herbs have a stronger taste than fresh herbs. Really enjoyed this vid, now I want a muffin!
Pulling the green bits off should eliminate the "vegetal" flavor from the thistle extraction. The whitish bits inside should be kept. And I'd do what a commenter above mentioned; use the invert sugar syrup as a "solvent" for the extraction instead of just plain water. Heat it to 114C as before, pour it over the flower petals, then strain the flowers out using butter muslin while it's still somewhat warm.
c-can you be my dad? D:
Me also please, thank you.
If he says yes, will you please invite me for sleep overs? I'll bring pizza.🤞
I know that honey tastes of the flowers the bees collected the nectar from but it also tastes of Honey rather than golden syrup. So i wonder if honey tastes of bee spit or bee digestive juices? Recently i bought some natural essences from Uncle Roy! They are very expensive but very good( you only need a very small ammount if you but the super strength.) I notice they do a honey essence which is vegan? Perhaps you could try preparing the syrup first adding your own extract, and then adding a bit of honey essence to enhance it?
It is coming from "the mouth of unexperienced", but I do believe sugar infused vanilla syrup is made through boiling vanilla beans in sugar syrup.
Maybe that would do with flowers in your case
i wonder if you added the whole flowers to the cold syrup, and leaving it steep for weeks would be interesting
Please give us an update with some tweaks like not boiling after mixing the flower concentration and only using the flower parts in the purple flower (not the green bits, that may have tasted like veg)
It would be really interesting
Commercial honey is sometimes mixed with corn syrup so that companies can sell more. The regulations of what can be classified as honey is pretty broad which is why they can still label it honey. In my experience local honey is generally better than store bought because you know that it’s pure
It's illegal to do that and sell it as pure honey (at least here in the UK), but I'm sure it happens due to the international nature of the supply chain, and the difficulty of discerning pure honey from that which has been adulterated.
Ultimately, even though I think such adulteration is wrong and should be stamped out, people don't like to admit that even real honey is basically just sugar syrup with a very small amount of enzymes and other stuff in it