Making Tea From Hawthorn Berries – Berry laden branches almost touching the ground with large swathes of little red dots covering fences, entangled in the lower branches of the oak trees and marching up hillsides… Who could resist such easy picking?
When you can fill a five-gallon bucket in less than 30 minutes, the lure is downright irresistible.
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Making Tea From Hawthorn Berries
And there you are, bucket full of berries and leaves in hand, heading for the kitchen and the great Hawthorn extravaganza.
Hawthorn Herbal Ally For The Heart And Mind
But before you get caught up in spending most of the rest of your week dealing with your bounty, here are some quick tricks to make quick work of your harvest and create some tempting and delicious healing foods and remedies , which are perfect for the season.
First, set at least half of the berries and all the leaves aside on wide flat trays for drying. Wash them by running them through a colander with cold water and shake them well before placing them on the drying racks.
Cookie sheets with cooling racks set in them to raise leaves and berries from the surface of the pan work well. No racks? Simply grease the pans with baking paper before spreading the leaves and berries out to dry. If you are using an oven, use it only after you have turned it off and the oven temperature is 90°F or less. Otherwise, the leaves quickly turn to burnt dust. You may also wish to separate the berries and leaves and dry the berries at temperatures up to 130°F to 150°F and keep the leaves at the lower temperatures. By storing them in sealed paper bags until you use them to make tea or other recipes, you avoid sealing in moisture that can cause spoilage or mold.
This will give you long-lasting berries for later use as well as the first two ingredients in Hawthorn tea. The berries don’t stay fresh, so dry the ones you’re not ready to use right away.
A Cup Of Hot Hawthorn Tea Made From Freshly Picked Berries, Herbal Medicine For Heart Health Stock Photo
The rest of the berries are then washed, sorted and de-stemmed. You can use the recipes on this page to make tincture, syrup and a nice tasty ketchup for the berries. Now you can measure your berries and determine the recipes and decide how much you want to make. I typically make all three recipes in one afternoon to get the most out of working with the berries at once.
First, decide how much syrup you want to make. Boiling down the syrup takes about twenty times more water than the weight of your berries, so if you plan to make a liter or more of syrup, you will need at least a 10 liter pot to hold the water.
Hawthorn Syrup is a well-known herbal remedy for coughs, colds, flu-like symptoms, headaches and strengthening the heart.
Choose your berries and weigh them so you know how much water to add to your pot. For simplicity, we will say we use 100 grams of berries or 3.5 ounces because it makes measuring the water very easy. I would suggest using multiples of 100 grams for your recipe. That will mean 3.5, 7, 10.5, and 14 ounces when you increase the recipe. But remember, you need 20 times the water, so unless you have a very large simmering pot, you’re working in the lower numbers here.
Hawthorn (crataegus Monogyna): A Tree Of Edges, Magic And Heart Healing — A.s Apothecary
This is a great sauce to use on winter squash, meats and greens. We love it on pork ribs with collards and kale.
Hawthorn has been used to strengthen the heart and provide healing for centuries. The famous Dr. Christopher Hawthorn syrup is still sold today and has a large and growing following of those who swear by its healing powers. Now you can enjoy these delicious and healing berries all year round with your own berries. Syrup and ketchup keep up to approximately 3 months in the fridge.
When you run out, simply use your dried berries to make new batches. You’ll need to soak the berries in fresh room temperature water for an hour or so before starting the recipes to rehydrate them, but then they’re ready to work just like fall’s fresh-harvested berries.
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Hawthorn Berry Tincture
Cookies are essential for a website to function properly and we use them to help us offer you the best online experience. By using our website and/or clicking OK, you accept our use of cookies in accordance with our cookie policy. I agree. inches long and strong; tensile strength. And yet it is unlikely that a gentler, more nourishing medicinal plant will be found.” -jim mcdonald
For today’s article, I am sharing excerpts from Alchemy of Herbs about hawthorn’s many healing gifts. I’m also including one of my all-time favorite recipes: Hawthorn Cordial.
Hawthorn from Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients into Foods and Remedies that Heal by Rosalee de la Forêt (Hay House, 2017)
Since heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, it is surprising to me that more people do not know about hawthorn. Before I start sounding like a snake oil salesman, I should note that people get heart disease for many reasons and hawthorn is not a cure you can take while ignoring important foundations of wellness such as a healthy diet and an active lifestyle.
Hawthorn Berry, Leaf, & Flower
European culture has long been fascinated by hawthorn, and many myths and bits of folklore surround this thorny tree. In addition to being used medicinally, the tree’s hard wood was made into tools, and the thick, thorny nature of the tree made it a popular choice as a natural hedge or fence. Various species of hawthorn are native to North America, where First Nations have used it to treat a variety of ailments, including wounds and digestive problems. People in China also have a well-developed relationship with hawthorn and often use it for stagnant digestion.
In the spring, hawthorn trees produce a profusion of lovely white to pink flowers. After pollination, the tree begins to form many clusters of berries that ripen in late summer. These red berries are dry and floury and can vary from bitter to sweet depending on the species.
Hawthorn is a tree in the rose family that grows throughout the northern hemisphere. There are more than 280 species, and herbalists use them all in the same way. The most studied species in science have been
The current Western medicine paradigm for treating chronic disease relies heavily on suppressing symptoms rather than addressing the factors that cause the problem. For example, if you have seasonal allergies, a GP might give you something to block your body’s attempt to create histamine, but GPs often don’t give anything to modulate your immune system and prevent the allergy symptoms in the first place. This paradigm can be seen in the range of drugs that Western medicine uses to treat the symptoms of heart disease. While this attempted Band-Aid may save lives in the short term, it does not address why the person has heart disease in the first place.
Red Hawthorn Berries On Stem With Leaves Flat Vector Image
In fact, many commonly prescribed medications actually deplete the body of nutrients necessary for heart health. Statins, commonly prescribed to lower cholesterol, deplete the body of CQ10, an important enzyme for a healthy heart. Diuretics, commonly prescribed for high blood pressure, deplete the body of potassium. Potassium deficiency leads to irregular heart rhythm. In nourishing and strengthening the heart, hawthorn does something that no other medicine can claim.
How does hawthorn work? Like most herbs, hawthorn works in numerous and complex ways, many of which we do not yet understand. An important factor, however, is hawthorn’s high flavonoid content. Heart disease is often related to inflammation, and regularly eating herbs and foods high in flavonoids has been shown to reduce inflammation and oxidative stress.
From the 1950s until very recently, we mistakenly believed that eating foods high in cholesterol caused high levels of cholesterol. An updated perspective on high cholesterol is its relationship to systemic inflammation, which hawthorn with its high flavonoid content helps to reduce.
Researchers have been studying hawthorn in relation to various symptoms of heart disease for decades. In one study, researchers gave people with diabetes and coronary heart disease 1,200 mg of hawthorn leaf and flower every day for six months. After that time, those taking hawthorn showed a greater trend toward lower LDL cholesterol (“bad” cholesterol) and decreased neutrophil elastase (an enzyme that, when elevated, is related to heart disease) than those taking the placebo .
Hawthorn: A Little Known Super Fruit
The dose used in this study was relatively low compared to herbalist standards, and it would be interesting to see the effects of the larger doses that are more commonly used by herbalists.
For naturopaths, one of the most common indications for hawthorn is high blood pressure. Some herbalists use hawthorn alone, others combine it with other herbs, and herbalists commonly suggest it along with a healthy diet and regular exercise. After centuries of use, it remains one