Extract the juice from the cereal grass sorghum, reduce it, and you end up with a brown syrup that’s thinner and less sweet than molasses. Restaurants around town have shown that meat and sorghum go together like bees and honey, from Salt’s signature sorghum-lacquered duck to the pool of smoky sorghum gastrique that surrounded roast chicken at Niche. Last summer, Harvest chef-owner Nick Miller used the stylish sweetener in a mustard barbecue sauce to accompany sous vide rubbed pork steak, erstwhile chef Josh Galliano was using sorghum as a glaze for pork belly at his All-Star Chicken and Fish pop-up restaurant. Then there’s Farmhaus‘ Sweet Sophie bourbon-barrel-aged sorghum syrup that sealed the deal this fall on its brioche French toast – whether served as a savory beginning to the meal when topped with foie gras or as a sweet ending to it when served with rhubarb jam and rhubarb ice cream. Got a hankering for a drizzle at home? Grab a bottle of Missouri sorghum from Sandhill Farm, sold at numerous independent grocery and specialty stores.
This article appears in April 2013.