A recipe for making elderberry ketchup

Recipe cut from an unknown magazine by a friend of mine. Use this anywhere you'd use plum or A1 sauce.  I love it.


375g elderberries
1 minced shallot
1 1/3 c sugar
1 blade mace
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
2 T grated fresh ginger
1 T lime juice
1/4  tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Combine all ingredients and bring slowly to the boil. Remove from heat, cover, and let sit overnight.

After sitting, bring to the boil and simmer until shallots are soft. Press through sieve. Simmer until it reaches a thick pouring consistency, then bottle and process in boiling water bath for 20 min.

Let flavour develop for two months before using.


I doubke the recipe and use regular onion instead of shallot, nutmeg instead of mace, and malt instead of red wine vinegar. I also put in three or four times the amount of black pepper.

Rather than passing it through a sieve, I chop my onions really finely and run my elderberries through a juicer with a coarse screen so only the seeds, bits of stem, and some bigger pieces of skin are strained out.

I don't notice much difference in flavour from freshly made to two months aged. And it's too good to wait :)

Edit:
Mandy's post below reminded me that I also cut down the amount of sugar. The vinegar is the preservative in this recipe, not the sugar; so you can add sugar to taste.

I am going to try this using a jar of my damson sauce in place of the elderberries and sugar.  Looks like a great recipe!

Mandy Launchbury-Rainey wrote:I am going to try this using a jar of my damson sauce in place of the elderberries and sugar.

That sounds like it would work really well.  I've made some pretty wicked plum sauce with damsons.

Your mention of sugar reminds me I usually cut down the amount in the recipe.

ooh thank you!!
I don't have elderberries yet (though not for lack of searching. one day i'll find myself a tree!!!) although I do have a lot of other fruit.  I keep reading "you can make ketchup with anything" but have never actually seen a recipe using anything but tomatoes that other people recommend. I'll be trying it, probably with mulberries and apples.

I’m excited to try both the watermelon AND the elderberry ketchup.

Today I made a chicken salad sandwich:  chopped roast chicken, mayo, chopped celery, and some peach chutney.  It was really good.  Here’s a recipe for a single chutney.  As I said in an earlier post, chutney can be made out  of almost anything.  All it takes is to get started, and get the feel of it!  And to get started a specific recipe is needed.  Also, to gather a feel for chutney it might be helpful to buy a couple jars of different kinds.

Stone fruit Chutney
Sauté  three chopped onions in 3 Tbsp olive oil.

When translucent add
8 cups apricots, plums or peaches chopped into bite-size pieces(or a combination to total about 8 cups.

2 1/2 cups of vinegar
7/8 of a cup of honey
1 1/3 cups of raisins
2 Tablespoons of ground ginger or an equivalent amount of grated fresh ginger, or dried chunks of ginger root

2 Tablespoons ground turmeric (or dried chunks of turmeric root)

2-3 teaspoons ground black pepper, or more, if you like pepper.

2 teaspoons salt, divided.  Add one teaspoon, then after cooking, taste and adjust.

Simmer it all, stirring occasionally to prevent burning or sticking.  Break up big chunks with your spoon.

Simmer and stir and watch for thickening.

Chutney should not be runny.

If you have made jam without commercial pectin, you are familiar with the consistency you are waiting for. The hanging drop test, the plate test are both good ways to gauge this.

The juice gels, and there’s no watery stuff left to soak into the bread if you use it in a sandwich.

Feel free to increase the spices!  In the USA we are very stingy with spices, a teaspoon, a half teaspoon…. I got a recipe for Moroccan Chicken (I wanted something to use salt cured lemons in).  A friend and I tried it out, whole tablespoons of cinnamon, turmeric, cumin, coriander, kalamata olives, 2 cups each chopped parsley and cilantro, and of course the lemons.  So MUCH flavor!  I’ve been adding double and triple amounts of spices ever since.

Chutney is a great place to be generous with the spices!


This can be canned. Use the method you are comfortable with.