Herbal syrups come in handy this time of year and are easy to make. It is best not to take a lot of sugar when you are not feeling well, but if a little bit of sweetener makes the difference if someone takes their medicine or not, then it is worth it. A spoonful of sugar really does help the medicine go down. Often when someone is really sick, it can be difficult for them to stomach harsh tasting herbal medicines, so turning your herbal teas into syrups is a great way to make your herbal preparations taste good.
The basic recipe for making a syrup is to make an herbal tea, cook it down to one half of its original volume and then add one half parts of sweeteners and preserving ingredients. You can do this with many tea formulas and what turns a tea into a syrup is when you concentrate the tea by slow cooking it, then sweetening and adding something so that it will last longer than a tea normally does.
The basic sweeteners and preservatives that can be added to make a syrup are honey, brandy, glycerin, fruit concentrate, molasses, maple syrup and brown rice syrup. Brandy is of course the strongest preserving agent for a syrup but it doesn't taste that great. If you want your syrups to last for six months you want to add some brandy and then add something else that is sweet. Honey is the next best preservative and it also adds a great flavor. The one half parts of sweeteners can be one of the above listed ingredients or a combination of them. Syrup making is fun and can be a very creative process. The whole point is to make your medicines taste good!
Here are several great syrup recipes that I hope help to keep your family healthy and cold and flu free. Feel free to change the ratio of sweeteners using the list that I have previously given.
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Herbal Cough Syrups By Kami McBride
