What’s your favorite ingredient to cook with?
Mine is dark brown sugar. As I’ve started cooking more over the past years, brown sugar has become a key ingredient in breakfast foods and in elevating the flavors of certain meats. It’s very different from white granulated sugar, as it’s thick enough to harbor both a savory and an intense sweetness. Cooking with it is more fun because it clumps like wet sand instead of the fine, microscopic grains that stick to your hand and fall through the cracks between your fingers. Unlike white granulated sugar, where you might overestimate how much you need due to its thinness, a little brown sugar goes a long way.
However, brown sugar is the icing on the cake for me when cheffing it up, whether it’s a tray of warm yams (sweet potatoes), creamy shrimp and grits, honey-glazed salmon, or even candied bacon. For me, food isn’t just nourishment or art; it’s culture. Not in the “I’m a Black woman from the South soul-food” way—yes, those are facts about me…
