urtica wrote:
I am wanting to make some blackberry preserves with raw honey instead of sugar. I am thinking of cooking down the blackberries a bit, but then I don't want to cook the honey, so I'd wait until the blackberries were a temperature that would not kill all the magic in the raw honey. Anybody done this or something similar before? How much honey would I need to add to preserve the berries? I know that raw honey is a great preservative, I just don't have any experience using it for long term storage... any advice or stories would be great!
I have made preserves with honey, but have so far brought the honey up past 160F. (with rhubarb as happens) It has worked just fine. Raw honey keeps well even though it has lots of bacteria in it because the sugar content is too high for them to be active. However, my experience with honey is that if left it crystallises. Without heating the honey preserve there is no way to make sure it is sealed to prevent this.... unless you vacuum pack?
Here is someone who has gone there (cold vacuum packing preserves... though not honey):
http://www.judyofthewoods.net/diy/pump.html Some of the other parts of the site are interesting too.
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