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!
That should say “dry stems”. My fingers are dyslexic today.
That makes sense, about the dried stems.
I’m going to try my steamer/juicer if I can get to the berries before the birds do, next Summer. :)
It’s gonna take a LOT of berries to make some juice, though!
see post 129 for elderberrying- I’m thinking abotu gettign one and trying it- we used to make elderberry jelly, which i absolutely love- but it was a pain picking the berries by hand- the product in hte link looks liek it might cut down the process quite a lot-