What do I do with my plums?

Last winter got a bit too snowy for our single plum tree, and the poor thing broke several branches from the weight. This year it`s been healing good, but no fruit. *sadface*
But a friend in need is a friend indeed, and our friend Linn took her wonderful little dog, Tarek, to visit. They brought 10 liters of plums for us!
Plums are tasty. Yum. But eating ten plums a day for several days will make me need more friends who want their natural medicine straw badges (I see a D word on the Quinn list)....

So far I have rum-pickled 28 of them. That doesn`t seem to actually make much of a difference with the actual amount of plums we have. I will probably make another batch.
But we can`t rum pickle all of them! I crave variation!

Therefore I turn to y`all. Some of you beautiful permies and horticulturalists and doomsday preppers and pickling connoisseurs and what have you will probably have THE BEST way of storing plums!
What`s your special go-to super high quality awesome tasting recipe for keeping your plums delicious over the winter?

Come share your recipes with me! Please?

As a trade, my rum-pickle recipe:

28 plums.
3.cups / 0.75l of water
1 1/5 cups / 3 dl sugar (I used the whitest of sugars, but am quite sure other sweeteners will do.
0.5 Cup / 1 dl brown rum.

(I have tried translating my silly metrics to your supreme post metric system. Please forgive any inconsistencies.)

Congratulations on your windfall! What a blessing. Your pickled jar looks beautiful and thank you for sharing the recipe.

Plum butter is delicious. Here is a link to a recipe. Under the word Ingredients, you can click on the volume you want to make, 1x, 2x, or 3x’s the recipe in case you want to make a larger batch and use up more plums.

https://www.thevintagemixer.com/spiced-plum-butter-recipe/

I don't know if you can dehydrate them, after removing the stone. Dried plums are good for sauces.

Saladitos! You can dry and salt them. This is a treat in Mexico and the borderlands. They're traditionally made with a sweet prune-type plum, but if you dry yours partially before salting that may work the same way.

We also had a good crop of wild plums on the north central Plains of the U.S.......perhaps most of the northern hemisphere did well in this regard?  Because our wild plums need extra sugar, this is added as the pitted plums are cooked to make puree, most of which goes towards plum jam.  The portion that does not go to jam is kept for plum sauce.....and this was used today to make plum kuchen.  The recipe below is for 8 kuchens, which can be baked, then stored in the freezer for later and then re-heated a bit when ready to eat.  Good way to use up extra fruit.  If your plums are sweet enough without sugar, you can use them in these kuchens as a fresh fruit.  I made a 2-cake batch today, one for plum sauce and the other for fresh apple slices.

Website for recipe:  https://prairiecalifornian.com/dakota-kuchen/

If you have a freezer, wash the plums, cut them in half and remove the stone, then freeze the halves. Depending on how cold it gets where you are, you may be able to let Mother Nature freeze the plums for you, and depending upon the season and the container you use, you may be able to keep them outdoors and frozen.

My grandmother made delicious pastries, called kolache -- more cake than pie -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolach_(cake), but here are some easier baked fruit recipes from trusted sources.  Just sub your plums for whatever fruit they are calling for in the recipe.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/89417/no-skill-fruit-tart/
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/rustic-fruit-tarts-recipe

I'd also get a very sharp knife and cut the halves into slices, then dehydrate them.  You can reconstitute them later or eat them dried.  I think this is a bit easier and less time-consuming than making fruit leather.

Decades ago I made a peach brandy from the dregs of Gramma's peach tree, the cheapest brandy I could find, and some sugar. I washed, peeled, and removed the brown bits of the fruit and the stone, then layered the fruit with a sprinkling of sugar until the (half-gallon) jar was almost full, then added the barely drinkable cheap brandy to cover the fruit.  I stored the jars in the basement under the steps. Six months later it was very drinkable, in another two months, it was ambrosial. You can do the same with the plum, but I would use the ripest of the fruits.  Maybe this is something you to do to use up the last of them. It was great to drink and really good over vanilla ice cream.

plum jam! (I don't have a recipe, just sugar and fruit and maybe some pectin)

I make fruit cake with plums (upside down cake, halved plums on bottom)

juice (blend the ripes ones with water, strain, sweeten if you like such things, voilá).

I do the same as described above for the peach brandy, but with plums and vodka. Next summer it will be delightful for sipping over ice on a hot night.

Also, vinegar!

Plum Ketchup - adapted from the link below + what I did in red

8 cups plums (a bit over 3x 650ml picking containers)
2 shallots, peeled and minced (included in walking onion total)
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and chopped  (walking onion bases – 79 grams)
2 teaspoons dried tarragon, crushed
2 teaspoons dried marjoram, crushed (fresh 2.8 grams)
1 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed (3.8 grams)
Juice and peel of 1 lemon (2 Tbsp lime – no peel)
3/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup sugar or to taste
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1. Combine the plums, shallots, onion, tarragon, marjoram, rosemary, lemon juice and peel, the vinegar and sugar in a large saucepan. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer 10 minutes. (I cooked the plums first and put through my squishing sieve to get out the pits)
2. Cool slightly, then puree the ketchup in a blender or food processor and strain through a medium sieve into a clean saucepan, pressing it to retrieve as much puree as possible. Add the salt and pepper; taste for sweetness, adding a little more sugar if necessary. Cook down over low heat until reduced to 4 cups.
3. Store the ketchup in the refrigerator or boiling water bath it in jars for long term storage.
Note: Use this ketchup as a sandwich spread or anything to do with cheese.
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19920729&slug=1504688

Thank you all several lots for your replies!

Angela: that butter looks amazing. I am loving the addition of cinnamon and cardamom to the plums. Both warm flavours that I`d expect would work well with the sour sweetness of my plums! Sadly, no lemon or lemony things about, so this one is noted for later!

Abraham, Phil: Inspired by you both I ventured into the unexplored land of making prunes with the thought of heading over the top into Saladito valley. I definitely left the plums in the oven for WAY to long, so they went far past soft prunes into something akin to sun dried tomato-territory. Still tasty, but I think I left the chance for Saladitos behind a few hours before rescuing from the oven the driest prunes I have had the joy of encountering.
Dried plums ain`t all bad, and a lesson about diy prunes is made. Still a win!

John: the Dakota Kuchen looks absolutely amazing. Am without pie pans, but I am definitely keeping this for later as it is a very good excuse to get some There was an attempt at plum jam that turned into two kinds of plum sauce.
One "asian" style with chili, ginger, garlic and onion that turned out pretty alright. I might have been sampling it through the evening yesterday to get that slight burn that is working remarkably well with the plum taste!
The other I added some of the rum pickle juice from my initial post, and some licorice root and kept at a low boil for some minutes more. To my licorice-addicted taste buds, that was an absolute success. Just a tea spoon of powdered licorice root into about 0.5l of the sauce went a long way!

Barbara: Kolaches. Never heard of them, and they look really simple, so I had to try! As my nest mate has celiac disease I had to find a gf version. Did, and while I fudged mixing the flours to get a substitute (gf living is a lot of experimentation for a lad who`s been living the wheat life) and ended up with a dough that didn`t get as airy as it looks on the pictures, the taste is marvellous. Did a splotch of the sweet licorice-infused plum sauce and despite a slightly hard crust: WOW. This is definitely a part of my recipe book from now on. Yum.

Tereza: How do I plum vinegar? I am a vinegar making virgin, so I know nothing about this. Do you just add plums to vinegar?

Jay: That looks delicious! Plums work remarkably well for making savoury sauces, and this looks just perfect for my cheese habit :O How do you reckon adding some hot peppers as well to make a plummy hot sauce?

Vegard: you're going to make your own vinegar! It will make fabulous sauces and dressings and also a nice drink like switchel once the warm weather rolls around again.
There are two threads you might find helpful:
https://permies.com/t/40/14491/kitchen/Homemade-vinegar (old but very informative)
and
https://permies.com/t/127919/kitchen/Apple-cider-vinegar (for apple cider vinegar but works with other things, there are some good questions and links in this thread).

Good luck!

In August, my wife and I used our steam juicer to make a little over 10 gallons (38 liters) of plum juice from our tree that has 3 types of plums on it, yellow, red, and purple.

We are in the process of making 6 gallons (23 liters) of wine. This is our first attempt at winemaking and so far everything is proceeding according to plan. It will be ready to bottle in December.

We still have some of the extra juice refrigerated and it is quite tasty if a bit piquant.

Now the prune/plums are coming on and we will dry and freeze some of them.
 

Vegard Elseson wrote:Jay: That looks delicious! Plums work remarkably well for making savoury sauces, and this looks just perfect for my cheese habit :O How do you reckon adding some hot peppers as well to make a plummy hot sauce?

Vegard, I *never* follow a recipe without changes. If you want plum hot sauce, I'd make 1/2 a liter and record your quantities and additions - so if everyone raves over it, you can attempt to reproduce it a second time! If you're the only one who likes it, then all the more for you! (I've got a few things like that in my fridge - I just can't talk my family into lacto-fermented foods, but I know they're good for my gut, so I make some anyway and eat them all myself.)

Jay Angler wrote:I just can't talk my family into lacto-fermented foods, but I know they're good for my gut, so I make some anyway and eat them all myself.

You’ve just described half my fridge!

Hot plum sauce sounds awesome and I’m pretty sure a staple in many east asian kitchens.

Steve Mendez wrote:We are in the process of making 6 gallons (23 liters) of wine. This is our first attempt at winemaking and so far everything is proceeding according to plan. It will be ready to bottle in December
 

Plum wine! That sound amazing. I hope you will bless us with pictures of the colour and a description of the taste when it's ready to be sampled.

We don't usually get wine amounts of plums, but we _do_ get enough blackcurrants. Made 20liters last year as a first attempt at wine making. We read the sweetness meter up side dowm and thought a mid-range sweet wine was dry, so we added extra sugar. Now we have lots of bottles of what turned out an amazing dessert wine :p

I'm thrilled with the number of responses and the enthusiasm for using plums in many ways in this thread. I'm going to have to bookmark it somehow and come back to it later because I want to make all of these things.

I'm glad you like the kolache recipe, it is one of my childhood favorites. My grandmother used to use either sweetened cottage cheese or sweetened sour cream as a base. Put a little bit of that in the depression in the middle of the pastry and a piece of canned fruit on top. Cheap and delicious.