Black Liquorice

Black liquorice is the most popular candy for the Dutch people. Every year over 31.000 tons of liquorice is consumed! You will come across it everywhere, in the supermarket, at the farmacy, at the gas station and at the market. While in other countries you will rarely see it, there they are used to candy being sweet and being colorful. Therefor it's not very surprising Holland is the biggest liquorice producer on this planet. Of course in other countries they are people who love black liquorice and it gets exported away from The Netherlands. The YummyDutch webshop is an example of that. A couple of examples of delicious black liquorice:

Toch zijn er wel liefhebbers van drop in het buitenland en drop wordt regelmatig naar het buitenland geëxporteerd, waaronder ook door de YummyDutch webshop. Een paar voorbeelden van lekkere drop:

• Muntdrop (on the picture above)
• Kokindjes
• Jubes
• Topdrop
• Dubble Salted Circles

What kind of ingredients does black liquorice have?
The main ingredient in liquorice is the root of a liquorice plant. The Latin name of this plant is glycyrrhiza glabra. This extract has been used for centuries as a medicine, in Egypt is was present in the tomb of Toetanchamon and for instance in the Middle Ages they used it to make a juice that worked against coughing. In black liquorice it gives that eccentric taste to it. It contains a matter that is 50 times more sweet then sugar. Furthermore it has Gum Arabic or a modified starch to replace the (expensive Gum) and other flavoring to enhance the taste such as honey, menthol or aniseed.

How is black liquorice made?
In the month October the liquorice plants are harvested. This is not and easy task since the roots of this plants go up to 4 meters deep. These roots gets dried in the sun for a couple of day. After that they are transported to the factory where they are clean and chopped into pieces. With addition of water it is made into pulp and is thickened and runs through a filter. This is poured into big blocks and is named blockliquorice. This blockliquorice is transported to the countries that will be producing black liquorice, such as The Netherlands. When it arrives in the factories the ingredients are put together and poured into shape by a mchine. An average black liquorice candy contains about 3% blockliquorice.

Tags: drop, licorice, liquorice, black licorice, black liquorice, candy, black licorice