We gathered some red elderberry and wondering if anyone has some good ideas of what we can do with it. I’ve heard you shouldn’t eat it raw, soo, uh, anyone have any experience with these, any recipes?
Yeah, I’ve been having a hard time finding detailed info. it seems the seeds are the most toxic, not to ever be eaten, but the fruit just has to be cooked. But I’m having a hard time figuring out how to efficiently separate the seeds from the fruit. Anyone have ideas?
we threw the berries in a pot, cooked and pressed them down to a liquid, then just filtered out everything leaving just like a syrup
did you taste it? I boiled a bunch of mine in a little bit of water, and then filtered everything out. but I thought the juice left over tasted a little to similar to vomit. like, actual vomit. feels like a “good to know i CAN eat it, but will probably wait til after the crash to bother with it again”.
hmm, I did taste it a little, we put some sugar in it too though, and I think it actually tastes pretty good, I can’t describe it but since it’s red I want to say a mix between raspberry and cherry in taste, haha. Definitely not as bad to me as you described it…
A made some black elderberry syrup, and it stained a plastic strainer yellow ???
Anyone know why that could be? The wine I made out of it got yellow scum on top, too.
The syrup tasted good though.
I heard the red ones are not as good to use as the black ones.
Ai have some limited experience with the blue elder. Eaten raw,they are good, but some bitterness.
Possibly the vomit taste you encountered was because you gathered unripe berries?
I’ve used blue elderberries for wine and jams. I processed about 30 gallons of berries a couple years ago and I think that’s burned me out on it since!
You should never eat the seeds or leaves or bark, they are very high in hydrocyanic acid. The way I process them is to boil them in a laudertun (great big pot I use for beer brewing) and then mash them up with a potato masher in the pot and then strain them through a large funnel with wire mesh at the outlet (using the masher to push them down to squeeze the juice out.) I also used a mesh bag before figuring out the funnel thing. They sell muslin and some synthetic fabric bags at the home brew store for squeezing out the liquid from the mash in beer making.
Incidentally, they are nice here in Washington state because they can be collected just east of the Cascades really late in the season. I think I collected most of mine in October.
Edit: oh yeah, I also meant to mention that I made 3 batches of wine. The first I left some of the seeds and mash in the bottom. Undrinkable. So many tannins leeched out of the mash that I didn’t like it at all. The second batch (actually done concurrently, but never mind) I carefully got all of the mash out of the bottling. It fermented for about 2 months in the primary fermenter and then bottled for a year was really good, but very strongly elderberry and tasted almost medicinal. My favorite batch I was running low on elderberry and supplemented this blueberry juice I got at the grocery store for about a third of the elderberry. It came out very drinkable after only 2 months in the primary fermenter. After 18 months it has mellowed yet more in it’s elderberriness and has a lot of residual sugars from the sweet storebought juice.
Blue elderberries are the ones to eat and juice. We harvest them late, the sugar content is highest late in the season. After a frost is best. Elder juice mixed with apple is really good.
I also tried red elderberry juice for the first time this year and decided that it would be worth the wait for blue elderberry season. It was drinkable though. I watered it down and sweetened it to taste like a fake lemonade. Next time I would add something tart to help with with the flavor or maybe just squish up some strawberries in it. The other option that seems like it might be acceptable for the flavor is to use it as a jelly