They say simplicity is a virtue. It's also a pleasure.

In the food world, and in the trying nonchalantly desperately to impress my girlfriend world, there are lots of seemingly complicated things that one can make which are built from simple components.

And this is one of my favorites.

This humble combination of sugar and water is a key ingredient in a ton of classic cocktails and other recipes, and I'm going to show you how to make it.

When cooking anything, it's always useful to understand what's happening down at the chemical level. You can improvise or improve a recipe on the fly, because you know *why* you're doing what you're doing.

Let's look at some sugar chemistry.

First up: the lovely Maillard reaction. This is the reaction of amino acids and sugars under heat, and it's what gives us the sear on a steak, crispy bacon, and toasted bread.

If you wanted to start a religion based around a chemical reaction, this is the one for you.

Then there's caramelization. Similar to the Maillard, but this time it's sugars reacting with other sugars to create delicious new aromas and flavors. This gives us creme brulée and caramel.

You can just dissolve sugar in water. This isn't technically a chemical reaction, since you're just physically mixing the two, and it's not going to thicken the way we want it to.

So let's add some heat to the mix. Boiling sugar in water causes a splitting of the sucrose molecule into its components of glucose and fructose, giving us a smooth, thicker syrup.

What do you need to pull this off? Besides the aforementioned sugar and water, just a pan and a heat source. You could do this over a camp stove.

Now unlike cooking mac & cheese, where it doesn't matter how much water you use because you're just going to strain it out later...

Voila!

You can just drink this straight, which is DELICIOUS, but let's make something with it.

As I mentioned before, this is a key ingredient in many a tasty cocktail:
the Old Fashioned, the Sazerac, the Mojito.

I should also mention that once you're to the advanced level of making your own simple syrup for cocktails...

You can pretty much go ahead and start referring to yourself as a mixologist. No big deal.

Let's further up our game a little more by adding some flavor.

Slice open a vanilla bean (or use vanilla extract if you must) and put that in while it's cooking. To borrow a line from Parks & Rec, your kitchen will smell "like Beyonce smells. I'm guessing."

Or toss in a handful of mint leaves, then strain them out once it's done cooking.

Let that cool and you're all set to make a kickass mojito or mint julep.

Syrup is also the way to get ginger into drinks -
whether coffee or alcohol, a gingerbread latte or a gingerbread flip.

Then you can branch out into flavors that aren't normally paired with sweets:
rosemary, basil, even sage. The resulting syrup provides a beautifully subtle aromatic kick to whatever you make with it.

The most important thing, however, is to try it! Try a flavor you think you'd like. Mess with your water/sugar ratios. You'll have it down in no time.