Erythritol | 1000 grams | OstroVit

Erythritol from OstroVit, 1 kilo sweetener

Do you want to use less sugar but don't want to taste bitter sweeteners every day? Then erythritol is a logical step. It looks like granulated sugar, sprinkles like granulated sugar, and tastes sweet without any strange aftertaste. This bag from OstroVit contains 1000 grams of pure erythritol, with no additives. Convenient if you bake a lot or sweeten your coffee, tea, or quark daily.

What erythritol exactly is

Erythritol is a polyol, also known as a sugar alcohol. That sounds like something with alcohol, but it has nothing to do with it. It is the name for a group of substances whose structure resembles both sugar and alcohol. Erythritol occurs naturally in small quantities in pears, melons, grapes, and fermented products such as cheese and soy sauce. For production, a fermentation process is used: yeasts convert glucose from, for example, corn into erythritol. The final product consists of white crystals that are 99 percent carbohydrates, yet provide 0 kcal. How is that possible? Your small intestine absorbs most of the erythritol, but your body hardly burns it. Most of it leaves your body unchanged via the urine. Therefore, it is listed on the packaging as calorie-free and sugar-free.

Baking and cooking with erythritol

Erythritol is about 70 percent as sweet as regular sugar. If you want the same sweetness, you use a little more: count on about 1.3 grams of erythritol for every gram of sugar. It works perfectly in cookies, cake, muffins, and crumble. Because it forms crystals like sugar, the structure of your baked goods holds up better than with liquid sweeteners. There are two things to keep in mind. Erythritol does not caramelize, so you cannot achieve a golden-brown crust or caramel sauce with it. And in large quantities, it gives a slightly cooling sensation on your tongue, a bit like peppermint but without the flavor. This is because the dissolving of the crystals absorbs heat. Many people therefore mix it with a pinch of stevia so that they need less. In coffee, tea, yogurt, and quark, you hardly notice that cooling effect. Good to know: erythritol dissolves more slowly in cold liquid than sugar. For iced tea or a cold shake, therefore, you first grind it finely in a blender or coffee grinder. Then you have powdered sugar within a few seconds, which is also nice to sprinkle over a cake or whip through into whipped cream. And if you make jam or a compote, erythritol will keep it sweet, but it preserves less well than sugar. Therefore, store homemade jam in the refrigerator.

Erythritol, stevia, or xylitol

Many people wonder which sugar substitute they can choose best. The difference lies mainly in taste and use. Stevia is hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, so you only use a pinch of it, but some people taste a bitter, licorice-like aftertaste. Xylitol is closer to sugar in terms of sweetness, but causes intestinal complaints more quickly and is life-threatening for dogs. Erythritol is somewhere in between: less sweet than sugar, without an aftertaste, and it is better tolerated than most other polyols. Still, even here, excessive use can have a laxative effect.

With a kilo at home, you can convert quite a few recipes. Store the bag dry and well closed, because erythritol, just like sugar, attracts moisture and then clumps.