Yacon syrup is made from the underground tubers of yacon plants. Yacon grows easily and, because it’s a perennial plant, you can enjoy free yacon tubers year after year. Yacon syrup has a sweet taste but is low in calories, plus it will store for months in jars. Stir it into porridge, milkshakes and yoghurt, or drizzle it over ice cream. Yacon is a superfood that aids digestion and promotes gut health. You won’t find yacon syrup in the shops, but you can make it yourself using no additional ingredients. It’s not very often that sweet things are healthy, so read on to find out how to make easy yacon syrup.
To make yacon syrup, you need yacon tubers. This means you need to grow at least one yacon plant. The good news is that yacon grows easily. Firstly, find out how to grow this low-maintenance plant by reading our yacon grow guide.
Yacon syrup recipe
What you need:
- Yacon tubers (peeled and chopped small)
- Blender
- Sieve
- Large saucepan
- Muslin/nylon cloth or bag
- Clean jar(s)
Method
Step 1
Place the peeled, chopped yacon tubers into a blender in small batches.
Blend each batch into a pulp and transfer to a sieve over a large saucepan. Leave this for a while to allow excess liquid to drip into the pan below.
Step 2
Once it has stopped dripping, transfer the pulp into a tightly-woven muslin/nylon cloth or bag. Squeeze out the liquid by hand until there is no more excess liquid leaking from the cloth. Our 3.8kg of tubers (from one plant), once peeled, weighed 2.1kg. This yielded 1.8l of strained liquid.
Step 3
Discard the pulp. Bring the strained liquid to a boil and continue gently boiling until the liquid has reduced a lot. As a guide, we reduced 1.8l to 200ml which took 2 hours. Keep stirring the liquid from time to time.
Step 4
Pour into a clean jar. Allow to cool, then label and store in a cupboard. Use yacon syrup sparingly because it’s very sweet (with a sort of toffee taste), and it should be limited to a maximum of 1 tbsp per day. More than this can lead to bloating.
