Chinese rock sugar

Sucre candi chinois

What it is

Bing tang means ice sugar: crystals grown over days on threads or bamboo splints hung in a supersaturated syrup, rather than milled out of it. Size is the whole point - one lump dissolves across a long braise instead of all at once.

In the kitchen

For a red-braise, melt a two-centimetre lump in the oil to a pale caramel before the soy sauce goes in - that is where the lacquer comes from. One shade past pale and the whole pot turns bitter.

Goes with

Pork belly Soy sauce Star anise Ginger Shaoxing wine Chenpi

Same species

Cane vinegar Dark rum Demerara sugar Golden syrup Icing sugar Invert sugar

Also used with

Edible bird’s nest Huamei Jiuniang (fermented sweet rice) Mei gan cai Red yeast rice Lily bulb

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