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Elderberries 2
Sep. 20th, 2012 11:39 amTuesday morning I went for a walk and found some more elderberries along the Gelrebaan, where I picked elderberry flowers earlier this year.
They weren't all ripe yet and if I'm guessing this right I might go back there every week for the next month and find more and more berries -- if I were that hopeful.
I made elderberry juice from them. For your pleasure, here's my recipe!
Pick a bunch of elderberries. I go out walking with a little plastic bag and some pruning shears. You never know what you might encounter. A small plastic bag full of elderberries is still a lot of work to clean. Remove any unripe berries (so pick only the darkest bunches of berries!) because the green ones aren't healthy to eat. Don't eat any berries that haven't been boiled first as they will give you a good bout of diarrhea.
Remove any al all stems for a good batch. This takes a while and you will get juice on your fingers. Remove any unripe berries, shriveled berries and berries with muck or bird poo on them. After all this work, rinse your lovely batch thoroughly!
Put your berries in a pot with just enough water to cover them. Boil this so the laxatives from the berries are neutralised. They are now safe for humans to eat. I boil for at least fifteen minutes so I can be sure all the berries burst open. The seeds can be toxic in larger quantities and although not everyone removes them, here's how I do:
I press everything through a sieve. A lot of juice is left. A lot of goo is left too. That gets tossed out. Remember: we're making juice, not marmelade. From the above batch of berries I got a liter of juice.
At this point I always re-heat the berries and add a sugar. Test it with a spoon to see if it is the right amount of sugar. I use dextrose, but normal sugar is a good alternative. To get a syrup, use gelatine. To get a marmalade, add apples or blackberries, gelatine and sugar to taste to the mixture and heat until everything is soft.
Once all the sugar (fructose, dextrose, whatever) is dissolved, make sure you have a sterilised jar or pot. I put on a very large pan of water and leave my jars in boiling water and steam for a while. Some people pour boiling water into the jar. Look around what works for you. If your jars are sterilised and left closed, the juice will keep pretty much indefinitely or until your lid rusts off.
Pour your hot juice into the pots and leave them to cool upside down. I'm unsure why they are upside down, but my mom used to do this too. Make pretty labels that include your ingredients and the date you made the batch, e.g. "Made with love on September 19th, 2012".
Because the mixture is hot going in, there will be a little popping sound opening the lid for the first time. This is a good thing, it means it was sealed airtight!
Once opened, the juice can keep in the refridgerator, depending on the amount of sugar and how clean the jar will stay after you've opened it. The elderberry flower syrup I made earlier this year had a fungus growing on it in two weeks after opening the bottle despite having a very high sugar content. The syrup I made three years ago still hasn't gone bad despite being in the fridge for all that time. You just can't ever be sure.
Enjoy!
They weren't all ripe yet and if I'm guessing this right I might go back there every week for the next month and find more and more berries -- if I were that hopeful.
I made elderberry juice from them. For your pleasure, here's my recipe!
Pick a bunch of elderberries. I go out walking with a little plastic bag and some pruning shears. You never know what you might encounter. A small plastic bag full of elderberries is still a lot of work to clean. Remove any unripe berries (so pick only the darkest bunches of berries!) because the green ones aren't healthy to eat. Don't eat any berries that haven't been boiled first as they will give you a good bout of diarrhea.
Remove any al all stems for a good batch. This takes a while and you will get juice on your fingers. Remove any unripe berries, shriveled berries and berries with muck or bird poo on them. After all this work, rinse your lovely batch thoroughly!
Put your berries in a pot with just enough water to cover them. Boil this so the laxatives from the berries are neutralised. They are now safe for humans to eat. I boil for at least fifteen minutes so I can be sure all the berries burst open. The seeds can be toxic in larger quantities and although not everyone removes them, here's how I do:
I press everything through a sieve. A lot of juice is left. A lot of goo is left too. That gets tossed out. Remember: we're making juice, not marmelade. From the above batch of berries I got a liter of juice.
At this point I always re-heat the berries and add a sugar. Test it with a spoon to see if it is the right amount of sugar. I use dextrose, but normal sugar is a good alternative. To get a syrup, use gelatine. To get a marmalade, add apples or blackberries, gelatine and sugar to taste to the mixture and heat until everything is soft.
Once all the sugar (fructose, dextrose, whatever) is dissolved, make sure you have a sterilised jar or pot. I put on a very large pan of water and leave my jars in boiling water and steam for a while. Some people pour boiling water into the jar. Look around what works for you. If your jars are sterilised and left closed, the juice will keep pretty much indefinitely or until your lid rusts off.
Pour your hot juice into the pots and leave them to cool upside down. I'm unsure why they are upside down, but my mom used to do this too. Make pretty labels that include your ingredients and the date you made the batch, e.g. "Made with love on September 19th, 2012".
Because the mixture is hot going in, there will be a little popping sound opening the lid for the first time. This is a good thing, it means it was sealed airtight!
Once opened, the juice can keep in the refridgerator, depending on the amount of sugar and how clean the jar will stay after you've opened it. The elderberry flower syrup I made earlier this year had a fungus growing on it in two weeks after opening the bottle despite having a very high sugar content. The syrup I made three years ago still hasn't gone bad despite being in the fridge for all that time. You just can't ever be sure.
Enjoy!
