You know the sort. If you take a few grains and rub them between your fingers, the brown colouring comes off. Anyway, all the brands I’ve ever come across have a sweet (don’t laugh. Normal sugar tastes of surprisingly little) chemical-y taste reminiscent of cheap, watery baked bean sauce. Why is this?
Here’s the answer from Boston.
Demerera sugar is made of medium to large sugar crystals, enveloped in molasses (of varying grades) and other byproducts of teh sugr refining process. Traditional baked beans were made from mollasses, as well. The amount and quality of molasses in cheap demerera sugar and cheap watery baked bean sauce is fairly low, but both attempt to imitate their more full-bodied counterparts of bygone days.
In essence, the thin coating on cheap demerera sugar is cheap baked bean sauce (before it’s added to the beans), and the coating is thin enough to rub off because a watery molasses solution won’t cling as well, and would dissolve the underlying crystal, if applied in large amounts (and you know the cheap guys aren’t going to bother with repeated cycles.of coating and drying)
Oddly, even though I was raised in the South, I am one of the few people I know who has never really seen the point in “Boston baked beans”. They’re okay, but why bother? What’s the appeal?