Brown sugar

Okay, so I have a recipe I'm making for Thanksgiving that calls for dark brown sugar. I haven't purchased it in a long time, so went to the store and found "brown sugar" and "light brown sugar" in clear bags. They hardly looked any different. So then I found a box of "dark brown sugar" and thought, "aha!" until I got it home, opened it up and it looked as light as the "brown sugar" in the clear bag. What's going on? What happened to the truly dark brown sugar we used to get??

The brown sugar you grew up with is no longer marketed. From what I understand, it's now cane sugar with molasses added. This may help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_sugar

The brown sugar you grew up with is no longer marketed. From what I understand, it's now cane sugar with molasses added. This may help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_sugar

Howie, That makes an interesting read. I knew that "brown sugar" was just refined white sugar with molasses in it and that the more molasses it had the darker it was. However, I didn't know how the original; brown sugar was the victim of a smear campaign by the producers of white sugar.

Carrie, if you haven't clicked Howie's link, it is interesting to read.

The brown sugar you grew up with is no longer marketed. From what I understand, it's now cane sugar with molasses added.

Howie, unless Carrie is very old (like over 100 ), brown sugar, at least the ordinary kind most of us buy, has been made in that same way. At least that's been the case on the West Coast, maybe there are regional differences. Here the main brand of cane sugar is C&H and I can say (just checked) that light and dark brown are distinctly different hues. I'm guessing maybe Carrie bought different brands at different times. When I'm buying white sugar I buy based on cost, figuring sucrose is sucrose regardless of whether it came from beet or cane. For brown sugar, where flavor matters, I stick to cane. I suppose you could argue that I shouldn't bother, should just buy molasses and make my sugar as dark as I want!

If you have an Indian store around check to see if they have any jaggery - this is the really unrefined stuff. Also similar to panela, found in Latin America.

I have found that "little difference" thing between the sugars when I have shopped at Safeway. However, the Fred Meyer store brand of dark brown sugar is definitely a darker brown with a distinct molasses smell and taste. If you can find it, awesome stuff.

The brown sugar you grew up with is no longer marketed. From what I understand, it's now cane sugar with molasses added.

Howie, unless Carrie is very old (like over 100 ), brown sugar, at least the ordinary kind most of us buy, has been made in that same way. At least that's been the case on the West Coast, maybe there are regional differences. Here the main brand of cane sugar is C&H and I can say (just checked) that light and dark brown are distinctly different hues. I'm guessing maybe Carrie bought different brands at different times. When I'm buying white sugar I buy based on cost, figuring sucrose is sucrose regardless of whether it came from beet or cane. For brown sugar, where flavor matters, I stick to cane. I suppose you could argue that I shouldn't bother, should just buy molasses and make my sugar as dark as I want!

Mark, I'm not over 100 but feel it sometimes! C&H was the brand I was talking about and I was looking at them side by side in the store. There was barely a noticable difference between the two. I have a feeling that most brands who make it are not adding as much molasses as they used too. That's the only explanation I can think of. Jo Ann, is Fred Meyer a grocery chain? We don't have those....

Mark, I'm not over 100 but feel it sometimes! C&H was the brand I was talking about and I was looking at them side by side in the store. There was barely a noticable difference between the two. I have a feeling that most brands who make it are not adding as much molasses as they used too. That's the only explanation I can think of. Jo Ann, is Fred Meyer a grocery chain? We don't have those....

Carrie, unless I am badly mistaken, Fred Meyer is the West Coast name for Kroger. In fact Kroger has several divisions in several different locations.



King Soopers
Fry's
Fred Meyer
Ralphs
QFC
Smith's
Food 4 Less
Tolleson Warehouse
Layton Warehouse

Mark, I'm not over 100 but feel it sometimes! C&H was the brand I was talking about and I was looking at them side by side in the store. There was barely a noticable difference between the two. I have a feeling that most brands who make it are not adding as much molasses as they used too. That's the only explanation I can think of. Jo Ann, is Fred Meyer a grocery chain? We don't have those....

Carrie, unless I am badly mistaken, Fred Meyer is the West Coast name for Kroger. In fact Kroger has several divisions in several different locations.



King Soopers
Fry's
Fred Meyer
Ralphs
QFC
Smith's
Food 4 Less
Tolleson Warehouse
Layton Warehouse

Hmm. Okay, I was in Ralph's when I was doing this comparison. I'll have to double check to see if I can find their store brand. Will report back!

Mark, I'm not over 100 but feel it sometimes! C&H was the brand I was talking about and I was looking at them side by side in the store. There was barely a noticable difference between the two. I have a feeling that most brands who make it are not adding as much molasses as they used too. That's the only explanation I can think of. Jo Ann, is Fred Meyer a grocery chain? We don't have those....

Carrie, I just happen to have recent samples of various C&H brown sugars, bought in different places. I'd already bought two pound bags of light and dark in the local grocery store. Then saw four pound (!) bags of light in Costco and, despite an impression that it was pretty blond, bought one of those, too. Looking at them now, I realize the Costco bag *is* distinctly less brown than the one from the local market. But the dark is definitely darker than light (if not a much different than you expected. So is it a batch thing? Seems unlikely, since you'd expect C&H to be pretty precise about how much molasses to add in. Is C&H getting stingier with the molasses in general? Possible.

On the Fred Meyer subject, it is indeed a Northwest member of the Kroger family. Perhaps they are more generous with the molasses but as I said before, my problem with the store brands is it's all beet sugar and I think cane (or rather, the cane molasses, I guess) just tastes better.

Be careful you get the right product when buying jaggery or gur at an Asian grocery store. Unrefined palm sugar is also called jaggery or gur. Palm sugar does not taste the same as cane sugar. The package should say whether it's cane sugar or palm sugar.

-Paul W.

Since the only ingredient on the pkg said brown sugar, I looked up the FM dark brown sugar on food tracker. It looks like sugar (not sure whetehr beet or cane) infused with cane molasses. The dark brown under the Fred Meyer brand is decidedly darker and so rich with molasses that the smell permeates the plastic bag and is noticeable on the shelf and in your grocery bag. The headiness of it is what made me buy it. I hadn't really noticed that much until this thread. I just knew I gravitated toward it over other brands. Now I know why.

Excellent research, Jo Ann. I'd mistakenly assumed that beet sugar would have been made brown using something else. I don't know if that gets mentioned on the label or not; I'll have to look sometime. Since all of this stuff is being manufactured the same way, refined white sugar with molasses added back in, and it's the molasses providing the flavor anyway, might as well go with FM if they're being more generous with the brown stuff. Less expensive, too, I'm sure.