Dragon smakar lakrits
Smaken hos fransk dragon är distink, örtig, sval och söt med en ton av lakrits (från smakämnet estragol) som påminner om anis och basilika. In a previous post I introduced you to Swedish candy — specifically lördagsgodis the large quantity of candy eaten on Saturday. In that post, I mentioned how Swedes go crazy for candy every Saturday, filling their godis påse candy bag to the brim.
Well, a good portion of that bag is often filled with lakrits , licorice. Licorice is an oil that has been extracted from the licorice root glycyrrhiza glabra and has a flavoring similar to anise, star anise, and fennel. The flavor is somewhat bitter to me and often comes in chewy gelatin candies. Licorice comes in all shapes and sizes here in Sweden. The most popular are soft gelatin candies.
Some are chewy and surprisingly strong in flavor, and others taste like plastic left out in the sun.
Stjärnanisersättare
Or, at least I think so. You can find long rolls of licorice in many candy stores here. The dark rolls slightly resemble wands and are stuffed with any number of flavors and often come coated in sugar or salt. My favorite flavor? Licorice with a lemony mint filling. I might have only had a few bites of it, but it was pretty good for licorice, at least. I am also curious to try this whisky-flavored licorice wand.
Another popular way to consume licorice is to cover it in chocolate. Genius, right?
Lakritsbollar
Everything is better with chocolate and this is the most likely way you will see me snacking on lakrits. Go to any grocery story or candy shop and put a few chocolate-covered licorice balls in your candy bag. The best ones are pink, covered in a raspberry hallon powder. In fact, hallon och lakrits raspberry and licorice is a great flavor combination! My partner thinks they are deathly good.
Not so much. Bubs Godis , the brand that makes these skull candies, definitely falls toward the plastic-left-in-the-sun side of my licorice flavor scale. Salty licorice is licorice that is covered in…well…salt. Ammonium chloride, to be more exact. It is generally very sour and makes a bad flavor worse, in my opinion. Legend has it that salty licorice has its origins in pharmacy stores and was first created to be used as a cough drop.
It has been produced in the Nordics since the s as a pastille. I can say from personal experience that it definitely will make you cough if you try it unsuspectingly.
After leaving a movie theater with Swedish friends shortly after arriving in Sweden, one of my new friends offered me a hard candy, only explaining that it was a common Swedish candy and leaving out the fact that it was a strong-by-Swedish standards salty licorice candy. I mistook the salt on the outside for sugar and popped it into my mouth. Three seconds later I spit the dark, wet candy back into my hand.
It was reminiscent of the Sour Black Cherry WarHeads candy that my friends and I used to eat in the third grade with a very pinched from sourness look on our faces. But licorice is a popular flavor here, and you can find many things colored black and smelling of that sweet-yet-bitter pungent spice. Licorice gum and ice cream, for example, are very comment in Sweden.
Try the licorice soft serve at Lakrids next time you are in Sweden during the summer. So what do you think? Are you a licorice lover? A curious licorice virgin? Or an adamant licorice hater? Let us know in the comments below. Either way, having a deathly salty licorice candy is a rite of passage in Sweden and you absolutely must try one if you are to move here.