Cought a nasty flu, so I've been drinking lots of herbal tea from our supplies of dried herbs. Mostly a mix of lime-tree blossom, elderberry blossom, thyme and agrimony. Unfortunately, I found out that we're either out of plantain/elderberry syrup here, or it's burried in some of the still unsorted moving boxes (yes, we're still working on the new house and our livespace still looks more like a nomad camp LOL). I need to bring home some more syrup from the cottage when I go there. But anyway, I'm almost good now and it reminded me of this request:
I would be interested in that recipe when you get time to share it.
I spent a while browsing through the site, wondering where this recipe should go, couldn't find a suitable thread so I'm just posting it here. Feel free to move it.
So, here's a generic recipe for elderberry syrup; they usually vary in the ways you use to extract the juice from the berries and what kind of flavors and seasoning you add. Just to make things clear, this is about the elderberries that we call black, dictionary tells me you guys likely know it as European elder. Please make sure you know what you're harvesting, as various kinds of elder can be inedible or even toxic. Also, don't eat the black elderberries raw, you always need to boil them for at least 20 minutes! The syrup is great for all the flu/cold kinds of sickness. Look up medicinal properties of elder to see what it's proven/believed to help with. This syrup can be used not just as medicine, but also as preventive care, or just an interesting food/drink sweetener that still gives you a little bit extra.
I'm wondering how would it work with honey instead of sugar; perhaps I'll try it this year. I guess for Americans/Canadians, maple syrup/sugar would provide another interesting variation. If you try it, let me know how it worked!
- 1 large bowl of black ripe elderberries, enough to produce about 1kg of juice
- 500g sugar
- 2 cinnamon sticks and/or whatever you feel like adding to a sweet syrup (vanilla, cloves...)
- 1 glass of rum
Wash the berry clusters and remove berries from stems. Fork is a great tool for this. It's gonna be messy work, make sure to wear something nice so you can regret it later. The fine thin stems on the berries themselves don't need to be removed, don't worry about them. Now we need to get the juice out of the berries. You can crush them in some kind of fruit processor I guess, but I never had one of those, so I can't tell how well does it work or not. I would advice to avoid using any means that would grind up the seeds inside. What I usually do is simply putting them in a pot and just start heating them, while stirring them around....the berries, as long as you really harvested them ripe, are very fragile and it doesn't take much to break them up. Make sure you're using a perfectly washed utensil for the stirring/mashing; if you're using a wooden one, make sure it's either new or a dedicated one that you only use on fruits, marmelades etc, not on meat, onion and oils - this will ruin the taste and may cause the syrup to go bad. Keep everything clean. Boil for about 30 minutes. Strain it well and keep the clean juice only. Add sugar and boil for 20 more minutes, keep stirring. Let it cool a little bit and add the rum. Fill into sterilized bottles (we actually keep a bunch of empty liquor bottles for this, those are naturally sterile when kept closed and have the handy screw-top). Now, you don't necessarily have to use rum. It work without it. You just may want to can the finished product. The rum helps to conserve it without canning and adds a nice flavour. You should know that for us Czechs, rum is more like a kind of universal sweet/warm seasoning for many recipes. That being said, our usual local rum is actually not a "real" rum, as it's just flavored spirit, watered down to 38% and has nothing to do with sugar cane. If you're a rum enthusiast, you wouldn't likely enjoy it. Personally, I don't like it much for drinking, either. But in this syrup, hell yeah, it's good. But, if you prefer, just add whatever alcohol you like. Important notice: make sure you make several "special" bottles with generous rum content, that you can easily recognize, but your wife won't. Save them till you get sick, then open and enjoy. You know how flu works, right? With medical attention, it takes only 7 days, but without, it can take up to a week. So, if you're gonna be miserable for a week anyway, at least gain this secret way to smuggle some booze to your bed. It won't cure you faster either, you just won't care.
