Thanks for sharing. I was looking to take the Easy Way Out, but it would be ridiculously expensive to make from purchased juice. You need 7 cups for this recipe and I’m seeing an average price of $19.99 for 11 ounces!
I’ve picked Elderberry before. Very labor-intensive. VERY.
https://www.riverhillsharvest.com/product-page/pure-elderberry-juice
I think Mom has the right idea to grow your own! :)
I wonder if you cut the bunches of berries, then put the bunches in the dehydrator, if that would work to more easily harvest the TINY berries? Just thinking out loud, here...
The original recipe I got used 7 cups; I just buy a pound of dried berries, make the juice as explained, and adjust honey/alcohol proportions per the amount of juice, more or less.
I assume that one could use fresh berries to make the uuice, but it would be a different method. Main thing is I think one doesn’t want to cook them, ie boiling etc. Maybe with a steamer juicer? I usd to have one, works well for grapes, pears and not so good for peaches, tried once with blackberries and I had to throw away thejuice. Because the seeds of blackberries contain a bitter substance that when steamed like that for a long time gets into the juice.
Jucst canned them regular way after that.
So, not sure the best way to get elderberry juice from harvested ones, maybe search around? Easier than drying first I would think.
The dray stems shatter easily, so you’d actually end up with more stems in the mix.
I use a fork to pull the berries off the stems. But I also don’t worry about little bits of stem here and there, as long as it’s going to be cooked. The toxin in elderberry plants is destroyed by heat. In the book “Herbal Antivirals” there’s even a recipe for elderberry syrup that uses berries, leaves, and stems, all on purpose. The give the resulting syrup a tea-like aftertaste, but it’s not bad.
Better with a little lemon juice and grated ginger though, that makes it good enough to eat even without the medicinal properties!
When we had our elderberries ages ago. I picked a couple of years, washed the heads and left the berries on. Put the heads in a shallow skillet and steamed with a tiny bit of water and covered lid. Berries came off easy and just added sugar and made some jam. I agree about the price plus I want to have my own supply.
I can post about growing catnip and prunella, I grow and make tincture and dry catnip for tea. Very good medicinal uses, also grow lemon balm (or sometimes spelled “lemon bomb”..) also do some tincturing but mostly for tea and even small vases in the house.
I’ve grown dill for seeds, and nice for pickles, also cilantro which i love, and then when they start going to seed, let them dry and use the seeds in cooking. So much tastier than store bought. I wrote something up a few years ago about kitchen spices and herbs and their medicinal uses, I can try to find that.
Hmm, another thing - I love fresh ginger root, which of course I cannot grow in Oregon. Or so I thought.... once I put a bunch of ginger root in some dirt in a planter on the porch (spring) just to keep it fresh. Then it grew leaves! So I put the planter in the sun and it got big. And grew some new roots, which would have gotten bigger if the deer had not eaten the leaves.
I read it takes 9 months to grow ginger roots. If someone plants bits of ginger inside in the early spring under lights or in a green house, and then puts outside when it’s warm and lets it grow for 9 or 10 months, they might be able to harvest nice fresh ginger roots. I may try this early spring.