[katherine]

You might want to try soaking chopped lemongrass in vodka or everclear to see if it comes out tasty. Later you can adjust the alcoholic strength as needed or add sugar syrup if you want to turn it into a liqueur. Be sure to stick a sprig of lemongrass in the glass.

 

[katherine]

THE GREAT LEMONGRASS EXPERIMENT

I bought a bunch of fresh lemongrass at my local Vietnamese grocer, sliced it and put it through the food processor to chop it fine. This I divided into 3 batches.

1) I put this one into a small pot, added 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup water, brought to a boil and simmered for 1/2 hour. At this point it was rather delicately lemon flavored, sort of a lemon-candy flavor than lemon-peel flavor. I will try using it to sweeten drinks when we get to the next step.

2) To make a lemongrass-scented oil, I put the next into a small pot, covered it with vegetable oil, brought to the point where it started to sizzle, reduced the heat and kept it there for 1/2 hour. This one is also mildly lemon-flavored.

3)I filled a glass jar with the rest of the chopped lemongrass, poured over Everclear (95% grain spirits), covered, and left on the kitchen counter. It's been 1-1/2 days now, and this one is outrageously lemon-flavored. I'm hoping it will turn out to be the kind of flavoring extract you can just add a few drops of to a recipe. I'm going to give this a couple of weeks before proceeding to the next step, which is where I start mixing drinks.

I'll let you know how that turns out.

 

[katherine]

Update on the lemongrass limeade experiment.

First of all, I have to go to one of the larger New Hampshire liquor stores to buy the everclear (190 proof), which I don't think is available in Maine. If it is, it's probably lots more expensive. Even in New Hampshire, you have to ask for it, and they go out back and get it for you. You will extract as much flavor using vodka, but the extract will be more dilute, and you'll need more vodka.
Now, for the drinks:
I strained out the lemongrass from the simple syrup, and also from the everclear extract. The yield for each was about 1/2 cup.
I squeezed a couple of limes, and made 2 glasses of limeade. One was sweetened with plain sugar syrup, the other with the lemongrass syrup, which took about 1-1/2 ounces per ounce of lime juice.

The glass sweetened with the lemongrass syrup had a distinct and pleasant lemongrass flavor. I put in the refrigerator for later. Then I added lemongrass extract until the second glass tasted of lemongrass, which took about 1-1/2 teaspoons.

It looks like a bunch of lemongrass will give you nine glasses of lemongrass limeade using the syrup, or 24 glasses of slightly alcoholic lemongrass limeade using the extract.

Next I made the ultimate sacrifice of adding tequila to the glass I had out, and now I am drinking it.

It is good.