Last Post of the Seven Days of Alton Brown Series! Let’s Celebrate With a Drink: Celery Seed Soda!

Well, this is the last installment of the blog series, Seven Days of Alton Brown. I hope I’ve entertained as I’ve ridden on the coattails of food geek hero (Alton Brown) by exploring some of the applications in his last Good Eats book, Good Eats 3. 

It was a fun project sticking to a strict blogging schedule of a post a day, and I’d love to be able to do this more often. Sadly one of the reasons this project was possible was due to one less person being around the house enabling me to make more use of the kitchen without getting grief, so for the time being, I probably won’t be able to keep up this rigorous schedule (hint hint.)

But enough on such sad stuff. While this is the last post of the Seven Days series, this isn’t a final farewell to Alton Brown. There’s still a ton of things I need to go through.

Seriously, look at all those bookmarks.

I think a fitting application is simple, sweet, and refreshing, just right to cleanse the palate. With just a touch of eccentricity. Celery seed soda it is! As always, this application comes from Alton Brown’s Good Eats 3.
This is very straightforward:

• two cups of sugar
• two tablespoons of celery seed, freshly ground
• one cup of water
• club soda as needed for serving

So, this is celery seed. Small but potent flavor containers.



Hopefully you have a spice grinder (I have a coffee grinder used only for spices.) Don’t go overboard, as grinding it too fine will yield some issues with straining later I believe.




Once your celery seed is ground, time to move to the next step.



Combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan, then set on medium high heat.







Stir while it heats up until all the sugar has dissolved. It started to bubble at this color, but if there’s bubbles, it is probably dissolved.



Once off the heat, it went from cloudy to clear in fairly quickly.



Add your ground celery seed.



And mix it in, trying to scrape down as much of the seed into the syrup as possible.



Cover and let sit for an hour.



Once that is done, strain it through a fine meshed strainer into something that can handle heat.

Sorry about the blur, I guess I went through a moment of clumsiness.

Then put this syrup into the refrigerator until chilled.

Once chilled, after an hour or two probably, it’s time to taste the results!



Take two tablespoons of syrup.



Alton Brown’s serving suggestion: Add one cup of club soda. Or you can use three tablespoons and just use a can, which should typically be 12 ounces.



Then, pour and enjoy!



For my own part, I enjoy my drinks a little bit less sweet if I can, so I found that two tablespoons to an entire can quite crisp and refreshing, if not as sweet as a typical soda.

Store the rest of your syrup in an airtight container and use as it pleases you. This should last you six months. I’m not sure if Alton implicitly suggested refrigeration or not, but I’m going to go ahead and do that.



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