I live in Oregon. Come the end of Summer, i will be surrounded by blackberries. Along the road, in the yard, in the neighbor’s yard, along the river: blackberries! It’s hard not to pick and pick and pick and fill the freezer with bags of berries. It is hard to use them all up, at least for me since i don’t cook many sweet things. So, after last year’s harvest i ended up with a few bags of berries chillin’ in the freezer until just a few weeks ago. I needed to make some room for the cuts of ram meat i was bringing home, so i defrosted one of the bags of blackberries for snacking.
Defrosted blackberries do not have much taste.
What to do?! I decided to make some syrup! I do not have a food mill, so i squished the soft berries through my pasta strainer and poured the juice into a small pot. Since i have no animals currently, I threw away the berry chunks and later wished i’d saved them to try and make vinegar (anyone have experience doing that???) I have no experience making syrup, so i scrim coached: Berry juice, a tiny bit of sugar, a hint of cinnamon and some time i simmered until the juice had reduced quite a bit. The resultant syrup wasn’t exactly syrup, but it was certainly thicker than juice and was GREAT over oatmeal, yogurt and goat’s milk ice cream.
I think i’ll actually PLAN on making syrup this year… but will need a recipe. And a food mill. Who has a great recipe, that hopefully doesn’t include more sugar than fruit? I just can’t handle much sugar.
If you have a berry great syrup recipe, please share!
I used to make sugar syrup when I would make my own dessert liqueurs, and I usually made them by heating 1 parts sugar to 1 parts water (you can adjust the ratio depending on how thick and sweet you would like the syrup… the thickest is 1:1, medium is 1 sugar to 2 water, and the thinnest is 1 sugar to 3 water). Simple heat it to boiling, and watch as the sugar dissolves. Add the fruit syrup to taste while still hot and you will have a pasteurized fruity syrup.
Also great for mixing with flavored vodkas and spirits.
I did the same thing last year. I picked and picked until my freezer was fill and I didn’t know what to do with them all. I made syrup and put the strained fruit bits and seeds in vinegar. The syrup was wonderful on ice cream or waffles (or both at the same time). The vinegar (I hate to admit) languished on my counter top for several months before it ultimate went down the drain. I never know what to do with fruit-infused vinegars besides salad dressing. And there is only some much salad dressing I can make or eat. As for recipes, I used this recipe from Marisa at Food in Jars, using blackberries instead of black raspberries. http://www.foodinjars.com/2011/06/drink-week-day-one-black-raspberry-syrup/