Isabella McCall, Columnist As both Virginians and Alaskans await our precious summer, we both look for signs within the natural world that point to its arrival. In Virginia, we joyously look for symbols of spring, daffodils and crickets. In Alaska, they search for small golden drops congeling along scratches in the bark of the birch trees that populate so many of their forests, the sign that “breakup” is near.
One of those signs is a bucket on a birch tree collecting sap that only begins to run when breakup is beginning. Alaskans turn that sap into birch syrup. Less sweet than maple syrup, its flavor notes include coffee and cherry, and it’s used to make chocolate or beer, to marinade fish and to pour on pancakes. In Alaska, foraging isn’t just for foodies. Outside of major cities, the nearest grocery store may be a two-hour plane ride or three-hour drive off, and even big-city grocers struggle to stock produce during the winter, so living off the land is part of everyday life. The arrival of breakup is an opportunity to fill larders that emptied over the winter. Despite the mud and muck, people pull on their Xtratuf waterproof boots—a staple of commercial fishermen’s uniforms which are ubiquitous during breakup—and gather spruce tips (good for beer, ice cream, and pickling) and nettles (often used similarly to basil, in lasagna and pesto). Since birch sap starts flowing through the tree almost exactly when the breakup begins, the weather birch tappers face is terrible. After a tree has been tapped, by the time a sap-filled bucket needs to be picked up the next day, the ground may have already become hard-to-traverse mush. This mush can be extremely dangerous as it causes rivers to rise exponentially, threatening those who try to traverse them. Processing the sap is tricky and time consuming too. The reverse-osmosis process of removing excess water takes several hours, and making one gallon of syrup requires boiling down nearly 100 gallons of raw, easily scorched birch sap (compared to only 40 gallons of maple sap).
Birch syrup has long played a role in the traditional Alaskan home-cooking, being a part of many recipes like pan-fried cod slathered birch syrup and salad dressed with a birch syrup vinaigrette. The syrup is not just a tasty treat, it is a sign of the weather, a symbol of Alaskan hope that the hard winters will give way to the beautiful, life-giving summer.
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March 2020
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