fermented wildberry preserves?

Welcome, Wardeh..

It's that time again, saskatoons coming soon and then the chokecherries and pincherries...

I was wondering if there any fermented alternatives to jams and jellies? Something to spread on toast? Does it have a really sour taste or does the berry flavour come through?? We have bees, could we use our honey in it??

thank you!

Hi, Kari! Great question and the answer is yes.

Any berry (except strawberries which are too acidic according to some) can turn into fermented preserves.

I shared a recipe here:
http://gnowfglins.com/2011/07/08/fermented-raspberry-preserves/


You'll need Pomona's Pectin, an alternative pectin that doesn't rely on sugar to set. These preserves are not totally gelled like you expect with today's preserves, but they're still delicious. We eat them on toast, stirred into yogurt or kefir, and yes, you can use honey (or any sweetener you'd like).

We picked blueberries last week and I'm going to make some blueberry preserves just like this...

Enjoy!

Thanks so much for the recipe, I'm excited to give this a try! The pectin looks useful for low sugar canning too...

I don't have a fridge to stop the fermentation...do you know roughly what sort of temperature I would have to get down to in a root cellar in order to get it stopped??

When you freeze preserves for long-term storage do you transfer to different containers or just leave enough expansion room in the jars? I thought they could go in an outside shed and freeze overwinter for better keeping...

sounds delicious, I generally pick a lot of wild berries but the frost has done in a lot of them and then the drought this year, we are still hoping for enough rain to get blackberries and elderberries, but it will have to come soon.

I may be mistaken but I believe there are some recipes in the country Living encyclopedia also

That sounds so good... I am looking forward to wild blackberries ripening in the next several weeks here.

Kari,

You need cold storage between 32 and 50 degrees F.

I recommend the book "Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning". It has good ideas for makeshift cellars.

To freeze preserves in jars, fill to below the shoulder of the jar. This way the preserves have room to expand plus they tend to break if they're expanding in the shoulder area. They will keep nicely frozen.