Blueberries- Favorite Uses, Recipes, and Preservation

Blueberries have to be one of my favorite foods!

They are so versatile!

They are amazing fresh just by themselves, and can combine delicious sweet and tangy flavors! They are also really good mixed with other fresh fruits and berries.

Blueberries can also be used in lots of delicious recipes! Blueberry muffins with homegrown blueberries are a breakfast treat to me, and a recipe that we call blueberry crisp, or also blueberry crumble, is amazing!. I'll post the recipe below in the next few days when I hopefully bake it.

These berries can also saved for later if they aren't consumed immediately . I have a really large crop this year so I will probably be preserving some of them to enjoy later. They can be frozen and are also delicious as dried fruit.

Here's a link to a thread with information about how I like to grow blueberries! Growing Blueberries with Natural Plant Nursery

What is your favorite way to enjoy blueberries?

Do you have any really good blueberry recipes or preservation tips?

Funny you should start this thread today, right after I made some amazing blueberry BBQ sauce for the pork ribs I made this evening.

Ingredients:  About three-quarters-cup of ketchup.  A cup of V8 juice.  Half a white onion, diced fine.  7 cloves of garlic, also diced small.  A quarter cup of balsamic vinegar, a quarter cup of white vinegar, garlic salt (I dunno -- 5 shakes?), hot sauce (again, I dunno --- 8 shakes?), the juice from one big lemon, about half a cup of brown sugar, a couple of shakes of cumin, and two cups of blueberries.

Cook it all together in a sauce pan.  When the onions, garlic and berries have softened, blend them in a blender.

DANGER! ranger: When you blend hot stuff in a blender, put a towel over the top of it, and pulse the sauce just a fraction of a second a couple of times.  If you don't, you've have a scalding hot mess explode all over you and your kitchen.  After a couple of pulses, you'll be able to turn the blender loose.  Blend the sauce until smooth.

Return the blended sauce to the pan and cook it down until it's thick.

Mmmm . . . enjoy.

Stuff pint jars to the brim with bluebs, pour hot water over, screw on lid, boil for 30 minutes, let set and check lid for seal, write "BLEUBS" on it with a date, and use it as your only source of moisture in the next  round of pancakes you make!  That's what I do

Edit; they're also awesome to throw into homemade wild applesauce or crab apple sauce.  Throw em in the sauce whole!  Do the same thing as above, only filling the jar with sauce, not water And eat it straight out of the jar, probably don't wanna fill your pancakes with applesauce...

The BEST, FRESHEST blueberry pie ever

Lymes has improved my diet: to keep ahead of the disease, I needed to eliminate sugar & yeast.  That's currently working well enough for me, with the benefit of slow and steady weight loss.    THANK GOODNESS I can enjoy blueberries in moderation, and don't pay too high a price for an occasional 'cheat' with sugar.  The recipe I found (Farmer's almanac, I think) called for MUCH more sugar - I've cut it way back because blueberries are sweet enough (and after cutting so far back on sugar, my tastes HAVE actually changed anyway... even without Lymes, that's worth a try for improved health!)  

Ingredients:  
1 9-inch single crust     3 - 4 cups FRESH* blueberries      1/4 cup sugar (to taste)     1/8  cup cornstarch    1 cup water    1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons butter    

Instructions:
• Bake pie crust.
• Pour 1/4 cup sugar, 1/8 c cornstarch, and 1 cup water in a saucepan. Mix until smooth.
• Add 1cup blueberries and cook over medium heat, about 7 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until mixture is thick and semitransparent.
• Stir in 1T lemon juice, then 2T  butter.
• Turn off the stove. Let the mix in the saucepan cool off or the fresh berries will cook & get syrupy like store pies.
• AFTER cooling, stir in the remaining fresh blueberries.
• Taste, and add more sugar to taste, if necessary.
• Pour into baked pie shell and chill until firm.
• Serve with sweetened, vanilla-flavored whipped cream.  (I skip this part...  it's good enough to stand on it's own!)

Blueberry soup. Pulverize a lot of blueberries, add a little water, a small amount of honey, & a couple drops of lemon juice. Cook it down until it thickens slightly. Top with ice cream, or not.

I learned about this soup from a Swedish friend. She sometimes used some pre-made from there that was a dried blueberry soup powder. It was good but fresh is better.

Laura Emil wrote:The BEST, FRESHEST blueberry pie ever

Lymes has improved my diet: to keep ahead of the disease, I needed to eliminate sugar & yeast.  That's currently working well enough for me, with the benefit of slow and steady weight loss.    THANK GOODNESS I can enjoy blueberries in moderation, and don't pay too high a price for an occasional 'cheat' with sugar.  The recipe I found (Farmer's almanac, I think) called for MUCH more sugar - I've cut it way back because blueberries are sweet enough (and after cutting so far back on sugar, my tastes HAVE actually changed anyway... even without Lymes, that's worth a try for improved health!)  

Ingredients:  
1 9-inch single crust     3 - 4 cups FRESH* blueberries      1/4 cup sugar (to taste)     1/8  cup cornstarch    1 cup water    1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons butter    

Instructions:
• Bake pie crust.
• Pour 1/3 cup sugar, 1/8 c cornstarch, and 1 cup water in a saucepan. Mix until smooth.
• Add 1cup blueberries and cook over medium heat, about 7 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until mixture is thick and semitransparent.
• Stir in 1T lemon juice, then 2T  butter.
• Turn off the stove. Let the mix in the saucepan cool off or the fresh berries will cook & get syrupy like store pies.
• AFTER cooling, stir in the remaining fresh blueberries.
• Taste, and add more sugar to taste, if necessary.
• Pour into baked pie shell and chill until firm.
• Serve with sweetened, vanilla-flavored whipped cream.  (I skip this part...  it's good enough to stand on it's own!)

This recipe seems delicious. I am definitely going to try it. My daughter loves blueberries so, I think she will be very happy when I'll make this recipe.
Thanks for sharing it.

Mary Luzy wrote:Thanks for sharing it.

thank YOU!  I did gather enough berries to make my first pie this summer, and was a bit disappointed - 6 cups of blueberries would have worked better in my deep dish pie plate.  But it tasted as good as we remembered, so BF and I ate the WHOLE pie in one evening, lol!  Also, in re-reading my post, I see I wrote different amounts of sugar in the ingredients list and in the instructions; i DO now use only 1/4 c OR LESS.

going blueberry picking again today - hope the birds and Japanese beetles left me some...  

I'm trying out freezing blueberries for the first time for cooking and maybe even fresh eating if the quality doesn't change too much after being frozen.

I see blueberry muffins and blueberry crisp in my future.

I've been freezing a lot of the harvest this year, as the blueberry bushes are really starting to produce a lot more than we can eat fresh.

After being frozen on a cookie sheet, like in the photo above, they can be dumped into another storage container to be stored in the freezer, and the blueberries won't stick together.

So far they seem to retain very good quality after being thawed out, and are good eaten out of hand. I also like to eat them after rinsing a handful under running water for a few seconds, for a blueberry icey type treat.

I plan to use a lot of these frozen blueberries to hopefully make a lot of blueberry crisps and blueberry muffins, my two favorite recipes at the moment, along with giving a few new recipes a try.