This year we had a good crop of blackcurrant - 750 grams, to be precise :)
Unfortunately, it's very sour, so it doesn't get eaten... After watching the bowls full of blackcurrant standing for the second day untouched, I decided to do something with it. I thought I would try a recipe from my "Concise Encyclopedia of Household" ("Краткая энциклопедия домашнего хозяйства"), 1984. This recipe doesn't involve any boiling, so the blackcurrant retains all the summery flavour and taste better than regular jam. My only concern is the storage: it's supposed to survive at room temperature for months, but I am not sure I will risk that, so probably will keep it in the fridge.
It's very simple: clean the berries from the stems, leaves and other rubbish, wash them, dry and then pound with a wooden spoon or a pestle (which looks a little like a miniature baseball bat). I added an extra step here: because our blackcurrant is so unbearably sour, I added 1 teaspoon of baking soda to neutralize the acidity. I've seen this in the recipes using rhubarb, which can also be too acidic. After mixing in the baking soda, I had to wait a little, until it stopped foaming - about 10 min. The resulting mass is then mixed thoroughly with sugar - 1.5 parts of sugar for 1 part of blackcurrant.
For my precious 750 grams I used 1.125 kg of sugar. The mix is then poured into sterile jars (I boiled mine for about 5 minutes). In the recipe it says to cover the mix with a 1 cm layer of sugar in the jar before closing the lid. I forgot to do that, so now it definitely stays in the back of the fridge...
Unfortunately, it's very sour, so it doesn't get eaten... After watching the bowls full of blackcurrant standing for the second day untouched, I decided to do something with it. I thought I would try a recipe from my "Concise Encyclopedia of Household" ("Краткая энциклопедия домашнего хозяйства"), 1984. This recipe doesn't involve any boiling, so the blackcurrant retains all the summery flavour and taste better than regular jam. My only concern is the storage: it's supposed to survive at room temperature for months, but I am not sure I will risk that, so probably will keep it in the fridge.
It's very simple: clean the berries from the stems, leaves and other rubbish, wash them, dry and then pound with a wooden spoon or a pestle (which looks a little like a miniature baseball bat). I added an extra step here: because our blackcurrant is so unbearably sour, I added 1 teaspoon of baking soda to neutralize the acidity. I've seen this in the recipes using rhubarb, which can also be too acidic. After mixing in the baking soda, I had to wait a little, until it stopped foaming - about 10 min. The resulting mass is then mixed thoroughly with sugar - 1.5 parts of sugar for 1 part of blackcurrant.
For my precious 750 grams I used 1.125 kg of sugar. The mix is then poured into sterile jars (I boiled mine for about 5 minutes). In the recipe it says to cover the mix with a 1 cm layer of sugar in the jar before closing the lid. I forgot to do that, so now it definitely stays in the back of the fridge...
feel tasty and special!
ReplyDelete