Eats: Mint Simple Syrup

Hello! My mint patch is small in size but is prolific enough to provide me with leaves for various recipes.

My husband likes putting flavored syrups in his coffee, so some of the mint goes toward that usage. In the past I'd used a mint syrup recipe that was a bit laborious to make. First the fresh mint had to be cooked in water, then slowly strained. The resulting liquid was measured so that a certain proportion of sugar could be cooked with it. The end result was pleasant to the taste, but a nuisance to prepare. 

Earlier this summer our local paper printed a recipe called "Mint Simple Syrup", credited to Brandpoint. It sounded so much easier than the recipe I'd been using that I could call this new version "Simple Mint Syrup". 

Since my mint was in need of a trim, I decided to try the recipe today. The amount of mint called for is listed somewhat vaguely as "1 large bunch". Wasn't sure how much mint that really was, so I snipped what I thought was a decent amount. I might have actually cut a little more than what I needed since I was making a half recipe. But I'd rather have too much than too little.

Above, washed mint ready to use. A short while later, I had this:

The above bottle represents half of what the scaled-down recipe yielded, so I got a nice amount of mint simple syrup for very little effort. 

How little effort? Well, here's the recipe:

Mint Simple Syrup (from Brandpoint)

2 cups sugar
6 cups water
1 large bunch mint, roughly chopped

Combine the sugar and water in a medium-sized saucepan. Stir to moisten the sugar. Add in the mint leaves. 

Bring to a boil and boil for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the syrup sit until it is cool. Strain the syrup to remove the mint. 

Store in the refrigerator until ready to use. 

Notes: as mentioned above, I made a half recipe. Somehow I didn't notice the "roughly chopped" notation for the mint, so after washing my mint very thoroughly, I tossed it into the saucepan, stems and all. (in my defense, my recipe copy, clipped from the newspaper, has "roughly chopped" on a separate line.)

Chopped mint leaves release more flavor than whole mint leaves would, but my simple syrup was still nicely minty - and of course even simpler since I had bypassed that time-consuming step. 

"perfect with lemonade or mojitos" the folks at Brandpoint proclaimed. I'm sure that's true, but I think Mint Simple Syrup would also be great added to iced tea - or a chocolate milk shake!