Cinnamon is a popular spice widely used in cooking. It has a sweet scent and a range of healing properties: it helps lower blood sugar levels, improves brain activity and visual memory. But it should be distinguished from cassia (a cheap spice), which unscrupulous sellers often pass off as real cinnamon.
Instructions
Step 1
Real cinnamon, or Ceylon, grows in Western India and Sri Lanka. It is the inner layer of the bark of the three-year-old shoot of Cinnamomum zeylanicyn, which is dried in the sun and rolled by hand into thin tubes.
Step 2
For the production of cassia or Indian cinnamon, the plant Cinnamomum aromaticum is used, which grows in China, Indonesia and Vietnam. They make fake cinnamon from the bark of seven-ten-year-old plants.
Step 3
Cassia has a low palatability and is less aromatic. In addition, it contains 2 g / kg of coumarin, a substance harmful to the body that causes dizziness and nausea. Ceylon cinnamon or real cinnamon contains only 0.02 g / kg.
Step 4
When buying cinnamon, carefully consider the packaging. Ceylon (or real) cinnamon should be labeled Cinnamomum zeylonicum, a bag of cassia - Cinnamomum aromaticum.
Step 5
Unfortunately, we must not forget that not all manufacturers are honest and decent. Many are deliberately forgery, passing off cheap cassia for more expensive cinnamon.
Step 6
At home, it is easy to check what you actually acquired with a little chemical experiment. Take some cinnamon and drip ordinary iodine on it. If the cinnamon after that acquires a deep dark blue color, then you were sold cassia under the guise of real cinnamon. If the chemical reaction is weak, and the spice is barely colored, then you have real cinnamon.
Step 7
Supermarkets often sell cinnamon sticks. In this case, it is much easier to distinguish cassia from cinnamon.
Step 8
Ceylon (real) cinnamon sticks are fragile and thin-walled. On the cut, they have many curls and resemble a scroll of papyrus, they are always painted evenly outside and inside.
Step 9
Cassia sticks are thick, reminiscent of dried bark. Usually they are badly twisted, or even not rolled at all. If outside the cassia sticks are close in color to real cinnamon, then inside they have a dark, gray-brown shade.
