The berries of chokeberry or chokeberry have been known in Russia not so long ago - just over a hundred years. Due to their peculiar tart taste, they are not as popular as cherries or strawberries. But the plants are as unpretentious as they have powerful healing powers. Among other ways to prepare healthy berries for the winter, freezing chokeberry is perhaps the easiest. And then use its miraculous properties in a variety of dishes and drinks all year round.
Is it possible to freeze chokeberry
Freezing chokeberries is not only the fastest and most convenient way to prepare berries for the winter. When frozen, chokeberry berries completely retain all their healing substances and properties. And she has a lot of them. Minerals, vitamins, organic acids and pectic substances, which chokeberry berries are full of, allow you to:
- improve the functioning of the endocrine system,
- strengthen blood vessels,
- optimize liver function,
- remove salts of heavy metals and radioactive substances from the body;
- improve vision.
One of the advantages of freezing chokeberries is the fact that after thawing, the berries practically do not lose their shape, look like fresh and therefore can be used for any purpose for which fresh fruits are usually used. Including for decorating confectionery products and for making a variety of liqueurs and wine. That is, the berries can be used all year round at any time convenient for the housewife, and not just in the autumn, when there are already a lot of worries with the harvest.
Chokeberry raisins
Another good solution for storing chokeberry berries for the winter is to create raisins. To do this, you will need 1.5 kilograms of peeled berries, 1 kilogram of sugar, 2 glasses of water and 1 teaspoon of citric acid.
First of all, you need to cook the syrup from water and sugar, after which berries and citric acid are dipped into it and cooking continues for 20 minutes. After the specified time has passed, the berries are taken out, placed in a colander and cooled. As soon as all the syrup has drained, you should place the fruits on parchment paper, which is spread on a baking sheet. As with conventional drying, future chokeberry raisins must be stirred periodically, continuing to dry for 3-4 days. As soon as it reaches the desired state, it is poured into a paper bag or glass jar, covered with a gauze bandage.
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In addition to the fruits, you will also have the syrup in which they were boiled. Do not pour it out, because if you pour it into a sterile container, then in winter you will have something to prepare delicious drinks and jelly from.
How to properly freeze chokeberries
The most important principles that must be taken into account in order to properly freeze chokeberries at home for the winter are the appropriate harvest time and careful preparation of the berries.
It is necessary to collect fully ripe chokeberries for freezing. Depending on the climatic conditions of the region, it ripens from late August to late September. Berries collected at the time of full ripening, but before the onset of frost, retain their shape well, but have a pronounced tart taste. The berries reach their maximum filling with nutrients and healing substances just at the time of the first frost. Therefore, it is more advisable to collect chokeberry berries for freezing for the winter around this period, before or immediately after the first frost.
The next important stage is preparing the collected berries for freezing. They are first removed from the brushes and cleaned of all kinds of natural debris. Then they are washed in several waters, finally rinsed in cool water and laid out in a single layer on clean kitchen towels to dry.
Important! Only clean and completely dry chokeberry berries should be frozen.
True, there is one peculiarity here. If in the future you plan to make homemade wine or liqueur from the chokeberry after defrosting, then it is not advisable to wash the berries. Because wild yeast lives on the surface of unwashed fruits, which, by the way, are perfectly preserved even in deep freezing conditions. They contribute to the natural fermentation of chokeberry wine. Of course, for good fermentation, you can always add artificial yeast to the wort, but this will not affect the taste of natural homemade wine for the better.
In this case, you just need to carefully sort the berries, free them from debris and spoiled specimens, and dry them thoroughly.
Depending on how you plan to use the chokeberry berries in the future, there are several ways to freeze them. But no matter what method is chosen, you should be aware that when re-frozen, chokeberry loses a significant part of its beneficial properties. This means that freezing must be carried out in small portions, so that one portion is enough to prepare a particular dish or drink.
As an exception, we can only mention the method of shock freezing, in which the berries are frozen in such a way that they are stored in bulk and the required number of fruits can be easily separated at any time.
Advice! Frozen chokeberries should not be stored in the same compartment as fish or meat.
It is better to use a separate freezer compartment to preserve fruits and berries.
How to preserve chokeberries with sugar without cooking
Chokeberry, ground with sugar
Since chokeberry is not very acidic, sugar and berries can be taken in equal quantities. The fruits are sorted, washed, and then passed through a meat grinder or crushed in a blender. Add half the sugar, stir and let sit for 10-20 minutes. Then add the rest of the granulated sugar.
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The finished dessert is poured into jars. To prevent spoilage of the product, it is advisable to sprinkle an additional layer of sugar about half a finger thick on top. You need to store ground black rowan in the refrigerator.
Soaked chokeberry
Even if you have never tried making pickled lingonberries or cranberries, preparing chokeberry in a similar way will not be difficult. To do this, you need to pour the washed berries into a glass or enamel container. Then pour the marinade over the contents, which is prepared according to the following recipe.
For one liter of water, take one tablespoon of sugar, ½ teaspoon of non-iodized salt, 2-3 cloves, and a pinch of ground cinnamon. The water with the added ingredients is brought to a boil and then cooled.
The soaked rowan berries are kept at room conditions for 3-4 days. After this time, the containers are tightly closed and stored in a cool place. You can store soaked chokeberry all winter. It has a unique taste and retains all its beneficial properties.
Homemade chokeberry wine
This is another way to preserve chokeberry at home without cooking or freezing. Aronia produces a unique wine with tart and refreshing notes. Many people add cherries, apples or currants to its berries, but this is a matter of taste. Black rowan wine is great, for example, for making mulled wine in winter. Remember the recipe:
Let your autumn chokeberry preparations bring you benefits in winter!
How to freeze chokeberry in containers
This freezing method can be called the most universal in use and simple in the process itself.
To freeze and store chokeberries for the winter, use containers of any convenient size and shape. Most often, these can be plastic boxes for a variety of salads or ready-made dishes.
The most important thing, as mentioned above, is the preliminary preparation of the berries. Completely dried chokeberry fruits are loosely laid out in clean and dry containers, covered with lids and sent to the freezer.
Chokeberry berries frozen in this way can be used for almost any dish: compotes, fruit drinks, jelly, healing syrups, preserves, jam, pie filling. They are added to dough when baking instead of raisins, they are used to make smoothies, tinctures, liqueurs, homemade wine, or simply added to tea along with decoctions of other medicinal herbs.
Attention! It is from frozen chokeberry berries that especially tasty jam is made, since when water freezes, it breaks the cell walls and through the resulting microcracks, sugar from the syrup penetrates and saturates the fruit much more easily.
For the same reason, chokeberry, which when fresh is distinguished by the relative dryness of its fruit, becomes especially juicy after defrosting, and is much more pleasant to eat simply for food.
Shock freezing of chokeberry for the winter
Blast freezing provides all the same benefits, but in addition, the ideal shape of the berries is preserved, so they can be used to decorate cakes, pies, casseroles and other baked goods.
The essence of shock freezing is that the berries are frozen at a temperature of at least - 18 ° C very quickly, literally in 1.5-2 hours. As a result, the sugar contained in chokeberry fruits does not have time to turn into starch and the berries completely retain their original structure.
At home, the following technology is used. Washed and well-dried chokeberry berries are laid out strictly in one layer on a flat tray or baking sheet and placed in the quick-freezing compartment.
After a few hours, the frozen fruits are taken out and poured into conveniently sized plastic bags for storage. It is most advisable to use bags with a zip fastener. They are filled with frozen berries, as much air as possible is released from them and sealed tightly. After which they are placed in a general compartment for long-term storage.
The berries are stored in bulk, do not freeze into one continuous mass and are therefore very convenient for further consumption.
Methods for drying chokeberry
As we just noted, there are three main ways to dry chokeberry berries: using a regular household oven, using a special electric dryer, and outdoors, in direct sunlight.
Of course, for quick drying you will need the heat of an electrical appliance, but if you are not in a hurry and have enough space, then natural drying will be a more acceptable option.
Air drying
Drying berries in the open air is the easiest and least expensive way to obtain well-dried chokeberry fruits. You just need to prepare the rowan in the above way, scatter it on a baking sheet in one layer and place it in a well-ventilated place, remembering to stir during the drying process.
When the fruits stop shrinking and become wrinkled, they can be removed for further storage. However, if weather conditions or any other factors do not allow you to dry the chokeberry fruits well naturally, then you can complete the process by drying the berries in the oven at a temperature not exceeding +60 °C. However, in any case, mountain ash should not lose its characteristic color and smell.
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Oven drying
Many housewives prefer to dry chokeberry berries in a regular household oven. From a practical point of view, this decision is quite understandable, because much less time is spent on harvesting fruits. As in the previous version, the berries removed from the umbrellas are washed well and wait until the water has completely drained, but only before placing them directly in the oven, the fruits are laid out on a dry and clean towel, which should remove any remaining liquid.
After the berries have dried well, they can be placed in the oven, preheated to +40°C. At this temperature, the fruits should be dried for about half an hour, after which the temperature is raised to +60°C and the process is continued until the berries are completely ready.
To determine whether the chokeberry has dried or not, pay attention to the presence of water drops on the fruits: if they are present, it means that the drying is not finished yet.
As with natural drying, rowan is periodically stirred, not allowing it to sit on one side for a long time. In addition, you can harvest chokeberry berries with tassels , for which they are cut from the bush with scissors and, strung on a thread, hung in the attic, veranda or balcony.
Drying in an electric dryer
Modern household appliances make our lives much easier, and this also applies to the issue of preparing seasonal fruits or berries. So, if you have an electric dryer, you can dry chokeberry very quickly, while maintaining the maximum amount of its beneficial properties.
How to properly perform drying in such a miracle device? Prepared berries (clean, without leaves or spoiled specimens) are washed in running water and given time to drain completely. After this, the fruits are laid out on a sieve in a thin layer (as when dried in an oven, no more than a few centimeters in thickness) and placed in an electric dryer, setting the temperature to +60-70 °C .
Well-dried chokeberry should completely get rid of water, while maintaining its natural color (the fruits should not acquire a red-brown tint). It should also be noted that with this method of drying, chokeberry berries lose their unpleasant astringency, and their taste becomes sweetish with a barely noticeable sourness.
Freezing chokeberry with sugar in the form of puree
It is very convenient to freeze chokeberries in the form of puree, mashed with sugar. In this case, after defrosting, you can get a completely ready-to-eat delicious and very healthy dish. This is a practically ready-made filling for pies, a base for jam, and an additive to cottage cheese dishes.
Freezing chokeberry in this way is very simple:
- The prepared fruits are simply mixed with sugar in a ratio of approximately 2:1. Then grind using an immersion blender or mixer.
- Leave for about an hour at room temperature.
- Place the prepared puree into clean and dry plastic or glass containers with lids so that there is free space at the top of the container.
- Close with hermetically sealed lids and place in the freezer.
Grated red rowan with sugar. Beneficial properties of red rowan
Rowan in the garden is a wonderful and useful plant.
Its leaves release phytoncides and plant antibiotics into the air, making the air near the tree particularly clean and fresh. The fruits not only delight the eye with their fiery color in gray autumn weather, but also have a wide range of beneficial properties. For example, rowan contains more vitamin C than lemons, and in terms of the content of carotenoids, which are converted into vitamin A in the human body, rowan leaves carrots far behind. In addition, rowan fruits contain vitamin P, tannins, organic acids, sugar, essential oils and many other compounds.
Thanks to its rich composition, the beneficial properties of red rowan are widely used in folk medicine. Moreover, not only fruits are used, but also leaves and bark. For example, fresh rowan leaves are ground and applied to areas of the skin affected by fungus, and decoctions from the bark are used to treat inflammatory processes of the mucous membranes and skin.
The medicinal properties of red rowan fruits include:
normalization of blood pressure;
metabolism is restored, the immune system is restored - which means the functions of the pancreas and spleen are restored - they produce a sufficient amount of antibacterial substances, which allows you to get rid of colds, inflammation of the thyroid gland, fibroids, prostatitis, prostate adenoma, inflammatory processes and joint pain;
the liver and bile ducts are well cleansed - which means clean vessels and capillaries, the cholesterol level in the blood decreases, heart murmurs and headaches disappear, memory and vision improve, and limbs do not freeze;
the intestines are cleansed, inflammatory processes in it are relieved - which means constipation or diarrhea stops, colitis disappears (the first 5-7-10 days of use there may be light stools with mucus, this is normal and does not require stopping use);
as a choleretic, diuretic and hemostatic agent, and in combination with leaves are used to treat scurvy.
Fresh juice from rowan berries and leaves with the addition of honey is an effective antiscorbutic remedy.
Rowan also has anti-inflammatory, capillary-strengthening, astringent, diaphoretic, and anti-dysenteric properties.
In addition to the above, rowan infusions are also used by people of other countries for:
- liver disease,
- kidneys and urinary tract,
- organs of the gastrointestinal tract,
- anemia,
- asthenia,
- gout,
- glaucoma,
- malignant tumors,
- atherosclerosis,
- rheumatism,
- with general weakness (after serious illnesses, operations),
- has an early and ulcer healing effect.
Fruits are harvested for future use in various ways. You can dry the berries in special dryers or on a baking sheet; in this form, red rowan berries do not lose their beneficial properties for two years if stored in a tightly sealed container in a dry and cool place. You can grind the fruits together with sugar through a meat grinder and store them in the refrigerator or cellar. Jams and juices are also made from rowan berries.
What can you cook from frozen chokeberry?
Defrost chokeberry fruits in the lower section of the refrigerator or under normal room conditions.
Important! To make jam or preserves, the fruits can not be defrosted at all, but immediately placed in boiling sugar syrup.
Often, chokeberry fruits, after defrosting, are used to make homemade wine, tinctures and medicinal teas. In winter, compotes and other non-alcoholic drinks with the addition of frozen chokeberries will be healthy, tasty and beautiful.
It is also often used as an additive to any prepared jam, especially with a sour taste. It can increase its value and improve its taste. And homemade chokeberry jam has an original taste and is very healthy.
Finally, once frozen, this berry is invaluable when used in any baked goods, both for fillings and decoration.
Red rowan jam through a meat grinder.
We will make red rowan jam without first defrosting the berries. Pour the frozen rowan berries into a saucepan with a thick bottom and place on the stove. You can add a little water. Let it boil until it becomes soft and rub through a sieve. Add sugar to the berry puree at the rate of 800g per liter of puree, heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves well.
Bring to a boil, turn the heat to low, and skim off the foam. 10-15 minutes of cooking is enough, and you can put our preparation into pre-sterilized jars, roll up the lids, cool upside down and store. This preparation is obtained in the form of jam. If you don’t want to bother with rubbing the berries through a sieve, you can cook them in the usual way.
In this case, first prepare the syrup at the rate of 1.5 -2 glasses of water per 1 kg of sugar. Pour water over sugar and heat until it dissolves completely. Dip the frozen rowan into the syrup, mix and leave for several hours. After this, we heat the syrup with the berries again and cook until done, that is, until the berries are not at the top, but are evenly distributed in the syrup. Vegetarian soups are tasty and healthy.
There are options for repeatedly heating and cooling the syrup, in this case the jam will look more beautiful, but still decide for yourself what is more important to you in red rowan jam: benefits or beautiful appearance. Of course, any rowan jam will be useful, but still, with repeated heating and cooling, more useful substances will be lost.
Rowan is useful for anemia, thyroid dysfunction, has a hypotensive effect and is indicated for cardiovascular diseases. For healthy people, it will increase immunity, and for those who have sedentary work and intestinal problems, raw rowan jam will be especially useful, as it has a laxative effect. If you have a cold, you can make a fruit drink from harvested rowan and drink it several times during the day. If you are struggling with excess weight, you will be interested in diet salads.
Delicious jam from red rowan is obtained by boiling it in a mixture with apples. For 1 kg of rowan, you can take 0.5-1 kg of apples, preferably dense and sour ones. The apples need to be cored and cut into slices. If you want, you can remove a thin layer of skin and cut the apples into cubes. Prepare syrup based on 1 kg of mixture of rowan berries and apples, take 0.5 kg of sugar and a glass of water.
Pour hot syrup over apples, add frozen rowan, bring to a boil and remove from heat. Let it sit for several hours. Then drain the syrup, add another 0.5 kg of sugar, wait for it to boil and pour in the rowan-apple mixture. You can bring it to a boil again, let it sit and only then finish cooking, or you can immediately cook until done. If desired, add a cinnamon stick to the jam, then you will need to remove it. Here you will find the best recipes for vegetarian cabbage soup.
Pour the finished product into hot sterilized jars and seal. Another option is rowan jam with oranges. For 1 kg of rowan, 1 orange is enough. Use a sharp knife to remove the thin top layer of zest from the orange. Peel the slices from the film and divide into 3-4 parts. Pour frozen rowan berries with 1 glass of water and heat to a boil.
Drain the water and cook the syrup at the rate of 1-1.2 kg of sugar per 1 kg of berries. Pour syrup over berries. Add orange slices and chopped zest in a blender or meat grinder. Cook until the fruits are evenly distributed in the syrup. This preparation has a beautiful color and a very pleasant aroma. Delicious jam can be made from rowan and pumpkin. For this, pumpkin is cut into small cubes. Otherwise the recipe is the same as for rowan berries with apples.
