I’ve been wanting to try this for over a year and today, finally, I noticed my chance. I can’t even remember how I stumbled across this. Maybe it was researching making syrup from boxelder trees (another thing I’ve always wanted to try). Who knows? But today… the word is MUGOLIO.
Mugolio is the term applied to syrup made from pine cones! Right? Who knew? Well, evidently, Italians and fancy chefs have known for centuries. It originally was made from the cones of the mugo pine. But I found THIS LINK, and he says any pine, spruce, fir, even juniper berries can make syrup. Ok, that’s interesting, but why bother. Well, supposedly, mugolio syrup is one of the most expensive syrups out there! He lists $25 for a half of a cup! Is it worth it? I don’t know, but I figured I’d try it.
All spring I’ve been looking for young pine cones. Everything I saw was up too high. Surely there was a blowdown or broken branch… surely a shortish tree had cones… Today I was looking over a ledge and down across a canyon, and watching a herd of elk.
La-ti-dah. Watching elk is fun. But do you happen to notice anything else? Yeah. That tree I’ve been walking by ALL SUMMER has cones on it! Gah! Are they too old? Well, I don’t think so. They’re still green, unopened, and sappy! Might as well give it a shot, I’ll only be out some sugar if it doesn’t work!
Yes, wear gloves. They are sappy and fragrant too!
Into a clean mason jar…
I bought this last summer to be prepared… took me a while to find it tonight, I forgot where I stashed it… it’s a brown sugar without as much processing.
That’s it. That’s the recipe! Ok, yeah, there’s a bit more to it… so you need to follow the link and read it all.
By tomorrow, the cones will have released a lot of their moisture. They will ferment for a month at least. I figure I’ll let them go longer if necessary. If it turns out… they will make some unusual, but sweet, Christmas gifts!
I had not heard of this so look forward to updates later.
Looks like a precarious scavenger hunt! Reminds me of liquors I made for Xmas long ago…they were fruit (lemon, lime and cherry) and pretty tasty, but I swear you could have used them for jet fuel!!! “Spinning eyes emoji” Will be very interested to know your results.
Very interesting! Please keep us posted on the experiment
This will be interesting!