I have cultivated elderberries. they make a good pie or jelly, either by themselves (needs a little tartness like a shot of lemon juice to balance), or if the straight taste is not to your liking, then they are also great in a mixed berry recipe with blackberries or raspberries, or diced apple. elderberry jelly is sweet, the berries don't have much flavor unsweetened. Jelly spread on top of cream cheese with crackers or bagels is good. Jelly would probably be better than jam, as they are pretty seedy. I have also cooked them down with sugar, strained out the seeds, then incorporated into homemade ice cream (a lovely purple color!). Another idea for small amounts is to turn them into a syrup (as is commonly done with blueberries)

Do you use more sugar with elderberries than with blackberries, say? The berries themselves sure don't taste sweet, so I don't know how the jelly ends up sweet.

I have 4 pints of blueberries (but I wanted to try Blueberry Lime recipe), and over the past couple days have picked maybe 4 pints of blackberries too. I also have homemade apple pectin, have apple trees I could gather fruit from right now, and have a quart and a half or so of blueberry-black currant juice (I used 2C to make some jelly the other day, have 1.5 bottles left), which with NS pectin and 2C of sugar made an interesting not-sweet jelly that could have probably used some lemon or lime juice.

What would you suggest? Not keen on syrup as a little doesn't go far, my kids are big PBJ eaters (though like apple butter better). DH has also taken to PBJ instead of lunchmeat for brown-bagging since I started making jams.

More elderberries coming - I left the reddish berries on the 2 trees, and there is a 3rd (small) tree which hasn't started to ripen yet. More blackberries coming too.

Thanks

Trees? Elderberries are a bush so are you sure they are elderberries and safe to eat?

Elderberries are very bitter and I agree with moogy that a tart additive is needed to off-set the bitterness. They make a wonderful wine but we much prefer plain jelly because you don't get the real EB taste if other berries are added.

Elder Jelly

3 1/2 c Elderberry juice (about 3 1/2 lbs. ripe berries)
1/2 c fresh lemon juice, strained
7 1/2 c sugar
1 box powdered pectin

Remove stems. Crush and place in large kettle; crush. Cover and simmer about 15 minutes. Strain juice through jelly bag. Measure juice. If you do not have quite enough, add apple juice to make 3 1/2c. Add lemon juice and pour into kettle.

Heat, adding sugar, and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Add pectin. Bring to a full rolling boil and boil hard 1 minutes. Remove from heat, skim off foam and ladle or pour into hot jars; seal and process. Makes 4 half pints.

Dave

You could watch Monty Python's "the Holy Grail" for this memorable quote:

"I don't wanna talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! You mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!"

Anything taller than my 5'2" is a tree to me LOL. Yes, I'm sure they're common elderberry. The problem is I just don't have (and probably never will have) 3.5 lbs.

It looks like that recipe uses more sugar than most - I'm used to 1C of sugar per C of juice, not more than 2x as much!

I guess I could see how much juice I could get from less than 1/2lb of berries, the NS pectin box says to use a box full for 4C of juice, and half a box (box says 2 Tbsp, though I thought the website said 6 Tbsp in a box) for 2C of juice (supplement with apple as above) just to make 2-3 jars.

So *is* this PBJ material? If it's sweet the kids will like it, but if I'm using NS pectin I don't know how much sugar to add.

Here is a link that might be useful: Elderberry ID

Since you have all the ingredients, I think rendering the juice out, and using it to flavor/color a small batch of apple jelly is a good bet. This would give you a hint of the flavor, without being overpowering.

This is recipe my German friend translated for me from one of her books. I intended to make it b/c there were so many elderberries in our neighborhood but I never did. Sorry it is in metric.

Elderberry Pear Chutney

600 g elderberries
1 branch rosemary
2 small pears
150 g onions, chopped
3 juniper berries
4 cloves
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
280 g brown sugar
100 ml red wine
1 large pinch of ginger puree
salt
cayenne pepper

Stem the elderberries, there should be 550 g, mash in bowl. Peel, core and chop pears.
Heat the oil in a saucepan, stir in the chopped red onions and cook them until light brown. Stir in mashed elderberries, chopped pears, rosemary and sugar. Cook until the sugar melts. Add the vinegar, ginger puree and the spices. Cook the chutney over low heat, stirring occasionally, about 25 to 30 minutes. Remove the rosemary branch, the cloves and the juniper berries. Season the chutney with salt and pepper to taste. Put in cleaned preserving jars.

I chopped down a couple elderberry bushes on my property. I easily filled a 5 gallon bucket with berries off each bush. But - I just couldn't figure out what to do with the berries. They don't have a lot of flavor. The jelly was bland and sweet. The syrup was bland and sweet. My uncle has made elderberry liquer - it was bland. He's made elderberry wine - which was good. But I'm not a wine maker. So I ended up using my elderberries as a cloth dye.

If you juice the berries, you should probably just keep adding sugar until you get a taste you like, and something your kids will eat on PB&J. Or save/freeze the juice to add as "filler" when you are making blackberry or blueberry jam.

I was wondering how obnoxious (or noxious!) the seeds were. Pixie Lou has had my wild blackberry jam, it's seedy but the seeds aren't large and hard. Are the elderberry seeds not good - what if I used my blueberry-black currant juice, cooked the berries in that, sweetened to taste and used NS pectin (and lemon juice?)?

The jelly I made the other day with that juice and stuck in the fridge is weeping a bit and I didn't add *any* acid so I'm not sure if that means I need to add more sugar, more pectin, or both. But that jelly is a little bland by itself too, I wonder if some lemon juice and/or elderberries (or any fresh berries) would be an improvement? I do have blackberries (forgot I still have frozen ones too) and blueberries.

I also have 2 boxes of Sure-Jell regular pectin.

Thanks for all the ideas, I don't have the ingredients for the chutney but it sounds good. Blue Chair Jam book has peach preserves in elderberry jelly, I don't have enough berries for that either, and the peaches I bought aren't ripe, but the plums and nectarines that are on sale right now (99 cents for plums, 1.49/lb for nectarines) are and I'm wondering if that might also be a good combination - make nectarine jam with elderberries in it for a little crunch, or would the color not be appetizing?

I made some Elderberry Jelly with Honey and Port Wine which was very good, but definitely not for a kid's PB&J LOL. I do not like sweet jellies, so I use Pomona Pectin and use alternative sweeteners or less sugar. I switched up the Honey and Port Wine recipe a bit and used maple syrup as the sweetener, which was really good too.

I use the Honey and Port Wine jelly a lot as the base for a sauce for beef or venison. It's wonderful whisked into some stock and drizzled over a filet or a grilled chuck roast. And I eat it on toast.

I find elderberry an interesting taste. I personally really like it, but DH doesn't particularly care for it. I'm not sure if kids would or not.

Let me know if you'd like me to post the recipes.

OK, not I'm not sure. I took these pix, searched some more to make *sure* these were elderberries before cooking them, sure looked like them. They didn't smell really bad when I broke off the leaves though.

Berries

Pith

Leaves

Double compound leaves - a mutation?

Bumpy stem/trunk (though this one was from the top of the stem, it hasn't toughened into bark yet, the barky stems looked the same but gray-brown like on the website below)

To my knowledge, the closest-looking plant is Water Hemlock but that has striped purple hollow stems, and my shrubs have bumpy bark with white pith. I could not determine whether water hemlock has berries, but since it is related to Queen Anne's lace (and often mistaken for that or dill) I figured it had seeds.

But I tasted 1 berry after cooking, just to see if the seeds were too obnoxious (I had already poured the berry-apple mixture into a sieve to drain into another pan), and I got a sensation of my throat closing up. I figured maybe it was just me, or it needed to be cooked more, or it was the seed. So I boiled the 1/2C of juice with 12 oz of the blueberry currant juice and 16 oz of apple pectin stock, 2Tbsp lemon juice, and 3 C sugar. I got 3.5 jars.

I just tasted a tiny bit (maybe 1/2 tsp) of the half jar from the fridge, it tasted just slightly bitter under the initial sugar-blueberry-currant sweetness, and I *immediately* felt a little dizzy.

I threw that jar out (I hope putting the spoon in the DW is OK), will throw out the 3 jars I just put in the basement. But can someone tell me if these are indeed elderberries or something else? If elderberries, was I supposed to crush the berries in the pan, or did that release cyanide that wasn't destroyed (even though it was boiled for 20 minutes *after* extracting the juice)? I was very careful to get all stems off, no bits of leaves in there, and I rinsed the berries in a colander after picking through them to make sure they were all soft and purple/black, no hint of green. Maybe I'm just "allergic" to these (though I don't want my kids to try in case they are too)? Maybe they weren't ripe enough? Thanks

Here is a link that might be useful: Elderberry identification clarification

The berries look at bit different than the elderberries I had picked on my bush.

Maybe try posting these pictures on the Name That Plant Forum. Those people are great.

Here is a link that might be useful: Name That Plant

Looks like Elderberry to me but the berries don't look completely ripe. Birds took all the berries off my bushes this year. Next year I will net them and hopefully get some.

The berries are supposed to be good for you so I would find a way to include them in your food no matter what the taste like.

Elderberries are the only berries I have managed to get picked this season, daughter was in an auto accident June 19th and her rehab is 3 hours away from home.
The berries in the pic aren't all ripe, did you remove the green and underripe ones? Unless you net it's tough to fight the birds by the time they get fully ripe. I like to pick them when the stem on the cluster is also purple and hanging down from the weight of the berries.
I lucked out this year, along the road down the hill are 2 huge bushes and the berries are nice and plump, there are enough on those bushes for the birds and myself. Picked about 15lbs so far.
Since I was a little kid I have made Elderberry Jelly and now I also make a syrup for winter coughs and colds that is added to tea.
Freezing the stemmed berries sure make for fast destemming of the berries and your hands don't get purple. The berry mash, in the past, I have used for wool dye.
Too chicken to try to make wine and I think they are way to seedy for pies or jam.

Well, the "something stuck in my throat" feeling is definitely me, b/c I ate a few blackberries today and the same thing happened, and then seedless (!) watermelon at 7pm and I still feel something there 3 hours later. Not sure about the dizzy feeling.

I'm glad these are the correct berries, but do the berries have to be absolutely black before cooking? I did take out any berries that had any hint of green, but used the purple ones. If they were purple I did make sure that they were soft. I did only take those clusters that were hanging down and had mostly dark berries, the main stem is also red.

Lizzy - best of luck to your DD. I hope she makes a full and speedy recovery.

I agree, they look like elderberries to me, and they don't look completely ripe.

I make elderberry jelly from a combination of elderberry and apples because I find elderberry jelly by itself mostly just sweet, not very much flavor.

We made elderberry wine, elderberry jelly and elderberry syrup when I was a kid to use on pancakes. I agree that they are too seedy for jam.

And that reminds me that I ought to check and see if they are ripe, I have a lot of them on the back of the farm property by the pond.

Annie

Purple/blackish I use. Yep I pick them when the stem is purple.
I had not quite enough for 2 batches, so I added some Pom juice, smells great.
Yes, we are hoping for the best for the kiddo. The outcome is unknown and she is paralyzed from waist down. But yesterday the rehab had her in leg braces and with the help of 2 PT's she stood up for 5 minutes.

LOL I read the quote from Monty Phython out loud and my daughter AND husband both says, bring out ya dead bring out ya dead. lol they LOVED that show and I couldn't see what was funny about it.
I have some elderberry cough syrup I got from the health store so that's what I would try to make since this stuff cost me like 20 something bucks! Small bottle by the way!

Gee I was starting to wonder if ANYONE would pick up on the Monty Python. Now I feel better, thanks!

and here is the video:

Here is a link that might be useful: The French Taunter

Wow, I missed lizzy's last post, just looked now that the thread's at the top. Please come back and give us an update - hope she's made some progress in the past month.

Annie - OMG, I am on GW all the time but I never seem to have time to sit down and email you. Drop me a line sometime to let me know how things are going with you and the family, maybe then I'll answer! I still have some links/documents on farm planning you may want, gotta dig them out. Maybe October, after market is done (10 more days!).

I checked out the book "Pickles to Relish" from my library last week. (As an aside I really don't care for her format.) There was recipe for Elderberry Chutney.

1.5 lbs elderberries
2 cups red wine vinegar
3 ounces raisins
6 whole clove
1 lb chopped onions
2 to 3 ounces light brown sugar
1/4 ounce ground ginger
1 teaspoon salt
dust of cayenne
mace to taste

Juice the elderberries with a champion juicing machine to obtain all the pulp; discard the seeds. Elderberry chutney may be made from juiced salvage after the juice has been heat extracted fro jelly but the best chutney is made from fresh berries. Run the elderberries though the juicing machine unilt the seeds begin to feel warm. (Note, I think you could heat the berries then run them through a food mill if you don't have a juicer.) "Blenderize" the vinegar, raisins, and clove; add the pulp and other ingredients and simmer for 10 minutes. Put in BWB for 15 minutes for 4 oz or 8 oz jars.