Cooking with maple: It’s not just for pancakes!

Creating a maple delight.

We all know maple syrup is perfect poured over steaming pancakes at the breakfast table. But did you know maple syrup and maple sugar have been used for hundreds of years to sweeten everything from pancakes and breads to coffee and baked beans?

In fact, maple sugar was an important cooking staple for the first European settlers to New England and other northern regions of the United States. The settlers learned how to make maple syrup and sugar from the Native Americans, who had been doing their own form of sugaring for generations before the Europeans arrived.

The history of maple sugaring is shared during the New Hampshire Maple Experience…. AND local chefs reveal their secrets for getting creative with maple in modern day cooking, too! Each day of the Maple Experience, a chef will share cooking secrets and samples during live cooking demonstrations at The Rocks Estate. 

The chefs often invite guests to join in the cooking during the demos. Of course, samples of the finished product are also shared! In the past, our guest chefs have whipped up culinary delights like Whipped Maple Mascarpone and Maple-glazed Scallops with Maple Dijon Beurre Blanc. This season, we’re expecting Maple Teriyaki Marinade, Maple Balsamic Vinaigrette, and a Maple Crème Brûlée. Mmmm…!

You’ll find recipes from our guest chefs at the New Hampshire Maple Experience website. Long live maple, and Bon Appetit!

NH Maple Experience is a Springtime Treat

Chef Adam serves up Maple goodness.

If you haven’t visited the New Hampshire Maple Experience yet this spring, we invite you to come on over to The Rocks Estate this weekend for some sweet maple goodness!

Beyond the delicious maple syrup tastings, the Maple Experience includes hands-on learning about the regional springtime tradition of maple sugaring, which reaches back to the earliest European settlers of New England and the Native Americans before then.

Make sure to bring your appetite, as Maple tours include a syrup tasting, complete with freshly made donuts and sour pickles (post a photo of your best sour pickle face on our Facebook page). We’ll also be serving up piping hot pancakes, and will feature chef demos – and tasting samples – both Saturday and Sunday.

Chef Adam from the Indian Head Resort returns to the Maple Experience on Saturday from noon - 1p.m. to cook up – and share – two delicious maple recipes: Maple Balsamic Vinaigrette (atop a crumble salad with romaine lettuce, cranberries, bleu cheese and walnuts) and Maple-glazed Scallops with a Maple Beurre Blanc over pasta.

Chef Kirk from the Sunset Hill House will join us Sunday at noon and cook up Maple Marinated Barbeque Shrimp; an endive salad with candied pecans, dried cranberries, and crumbled goat cheese and topped with Maple Balsamic Vinaigrette; and Maple Shortbread.

For these recipes and others featured during past Maple weekends, check out the recipe page on the New Hampshire Maple Experience website.

The New Hampshire Maple Experience is offered at The Rocks Estate this Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., as well as next Saturday, April 7. To find out more about the Maple Experience and all it includes, please visit the New Hampshire Maple Experience website.

Maple Facts for Sugaring Season

It’s easy to love maple syrup – whether poured over pancakes, mixed with olive for a tangy-sweet vinaigrette, or baked into tasty muffins and bread. Making syrup, however, is a long labor of love.

To gear up for the NewHampshire Maple Experience and give you a sneak peak of some of the maple tidbits you’ll learn during sugaring season at The Rocks Estate, here are a few Maple Facts:

      - It takes 40 gallons of sap from sugar maple trees to make one gallon of syrup.

     - Maple sugar and syrup have been produced in the New England woods since the days before European settlers, when Native Americans collected sap in wooden or birch-bark buckets and boiled it down by plunging fire-heated rocks into the sap.

     - European settlers streamlined the sugaring process over time, first collecting sap in buckets and boiling it in large kettles hung over open fires, then moving to wood-fired sugar house operations. Today, large scale maple producers often collect sap in plastic tubing strung between sugar maples and feeding a collection tank, and many sugar houses include heavy duty, gas-powered evaporators to boil the sap into sugar and syrup.

     - Sugaring season is almost entirely weather dependent and lasts about 6 weeks long. Sugar makers in northern New Hampshire generally tap their trees in mid- to late February, and the season may last into early April. Ultimate sap flow through the trees happens with below-freezing nights and mild days. Once the sugar maple trees leaf out, the trees’ sap turns from sweet to bitter, and sugaring season is over.

     - Sugar makers often mark trees during the summer and fall months, so they can easily identify sugar maples during the late winter and early spring days of collecting sap. During sugaring season, they use trees’ buds and branch configuration to distinguish sugar maples from red maples and other species.

     - A sugar maple should be at least 10 inches in diameter– which translates to 40 years or older – to be tapped for syrup. Older, larger trees can support multiple taps, as long as they’re placed properly.

To learn how to identify trees, properly tap a sugar maple to collect sap, and see sugaring demonstrated by a fourth-generation sugar maker, come to The Rocks Estate and enjoy the New Hampshire Maple Experience! Maple tours are offered this year March 17, 24-25, 31-April 1, and April 7 and feature maple syrup tastings, cooking demonstrations by acclaimed local chefs, horse-drawn wagon rides through the historic Rocks Estate property, and lots of fun!

A Tasty Tradition

Steam billowing from sugar houses tucked into the woods is a sure sign of spring in New Hampshire, where boiling the sap of sugar maple trees down to maple syrup and sugar has been a tradition in for centuries.

The New Hampshire Maple Experience takes visitors on a tour through time and taste, sharing the history and sweet secrets of making maple syrup.

There are two weekends of Maple Tours left this spring at The Rocks Estate. From tapping a tree to tasting the finished product, the tour is a sweet experience!

The famous Polly’s Pancake Parlor is also on hand, serving up piping hot pancakes, and our shop features New Hampshire made crafts and edibles.

Maple Syrup – It’s Not Just for Pancakes Anymore

Maple syrup is most often associated with breakfast, and it’s delicious poured over piping hot, right-off-the-griddle pancakes.

But since early New England settlers started collecting sap and boiling it down, maple syrup and sugar have been used in a plethora of recipes. Home bakers use it to sweeten bread, cookies, pies, and muffins. New Englanders have been known add maple syrup to the pot as they’re simmering baked beans. Maple syrup is used in marinades for meat, or baked into fresh vegetables. It’s even been used to flavor coffee and whiskey.

If you have a maple recipe that’s merits sharing – or want to see how others use maple syrup in their cooking – visit our recipe page.
Everyone who shares a recipe will be entered into a drawing to win a quart of delicious New Hampshire maple syrup on April 1!

40-to-1

That little one-quart jug of sweet maple syrup sitting on your breakfast table may seem simply sweet, but the process of turning sap into syrup is fairly involved….

It takes about 40 gallons of sap from a sugar maple tree to produce one gallon of maple syrup – that means ten gallons of sap goes into every quart jug you pour over your pancakes or waffles.

The sap-to-syrup process starts when sugar makers tap the trees, as the cold days of winter start to warm toward spring. The sap is collected in buckets or plastic tubing and transported to the sugar house. There, the clear sap (it looks like water when it flows from the tree) is boiled continuously until it thickens into syrup.

To find out more about how maple syrup is made, visit the New Hampshire Maple Experience site.