Processing Hawthorn Berries Jam – October/November, after the first frost, is also the time to pick hawthorn berries. Hawthorn is relatively unused as a bush berry, mostly used in hawthorn gin or hawthorn brandy. It can also be used to make jam or jellies. Hawthorn gin is much better than sloe gin. It’s not as sweet and syrupy as a liqueur, in fact, it tastes more like a fortified wine like dry sherry than a liqueur. Worth being mature. The hawthorn gin made now will be perfect next Christmas. If you think you can’t wait that long, double the amount – some drink young this year, some mature next year. Do a lot anyway because it’s so much!
Sort the berries, tops and tails. If you don’t, it’s time-consuming and not the end of the world – but it can make the sediment difficult to filter and can affect the clarity of the gin. Place the berries in a crisper jar and sprinkle a little sugar between the layers. Once you get to the top of the jar (leave a little room for shaking), fill it with cheap gin (supermarket own brand is fine). Seal and place in a cupboard. Shake the jar every few days or so.
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Processing Hawthorn Berries Jam
After 4 weeks, the berries will lose their color and the gin will turn rosy. (If you let it sit longer before filtering, the flavor will intensify. However, you’re more likely to get a muddy sediment. If you have bright plump berries, you can let the gin soak for a few months, but One month is enough if the berries are hard.) Once strained, strain into a bottle and ripen for at least another three months. Enjoy in moderation!
Oregon Grape Jam
Hawthorn also has a history as an herbal remedy for high blood pressure. It’s also good for the heart because it has vasodilatory properties and is very high in bioflavonoids – good for the heart too. This is fully supported by research. (If your blood pressure is already high and you’re on medication, you shouldn’t just stop taking it. However, in conjunction with a TCM consultation, you can reduce your drug dependence.) The best way to take hawthorn berries is as a tincture. Tinctures are basically herbs (hawthorn berries in this case) macerated (soaked) in alcohol to form a tincture. So basically hawthorn gin is a tincture. Eating small bites on a regular basis, as in rural days past, may help keep your heart and circulation healthy. Teas made with leaves or berries are also a healthy way to keep your blood pressure low, especially when combined with kaffir lime blossom and leaves. The common hawthorn or hawthorn is grown throughout North America as an ornamental tree or shrub. Its bright red berries, also called “hawthorn,” look like small crabapples, and ripen in September and October. You may not know that hawthorn berries are edible and you can make delicious jellies with them.
Hawthorn berries can be eaten raw, but they taste better when cooked. They can be candied, made into a peel, or even a savory ketchup-style sauce. Their high pectin content makes them a great choice for jams and jellies.
If you have some hawthorn trees nearby, try making a small batch of hawthorn jelly. It’s a low-cost and delicious way to preserve the season while adding some variety to your jam collection.
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Haw Flakes Are The Childhood Snack I Still Crave
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Any cookie that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function, and is used exclusively to collect user personal data through analytics, advertising, and other embedded content, is called a non-essential cookie. A few weeks ago, I stared at my backdoor Washington hawthorn, the fruit starting to drop after the cold snap, and considered Jan Grover’s comment on this blog in October: “A friend who teaches told me about the back of her school building. There was an abandoned orchard where I went with the intention of looking for the apples she described – and I found hawthorn! There were two small, gnarled hawthorns smothered by bright red hawthorns, I picked a few pounds and brought Came home and turned them into a Kool-Aid red/pink jelly that turned out to be Kool-Aid. . . . The taste was a little, um, wild, and went well with fall teriyaki. Sugar, lemon juice, water— That’s all: Hawthorn is apparently stuffed with pectin.”
If I want to try making hawthorn jelly this year, I have to act fast. So I took an orchard ladder and sampled a hawthorn. This tiny orange-red fruit has just a smidge of powdery pulp encased in five seeds. *This fruit is neither sour nor bitter, but has a sweet and spicy taste similar to rosehip and goji fruit. This is not surprising, since hawthorn is the cousin of rose and wolfberry. Hawthorn really should make a good jelly, I think.
Sweet Preserves Archives
When I picked them, most of the fruits were stemless. After fifteen minutes, I think I had enough hawthorn for a small batch of jelly. I rinsed them, shook them in a strainer to separate the remaining stems, and picked them out before boiling the hawthorns in enough water to cover them.
The juice turned cloudy pink, but clarified when I mixed it with sugar. I added a lot of lemon juice as hawthorn seems to have low acidity. The syrup coagulates quickly and firmly.
The finished jelly looked a lot like papaya jelly – almost as clear and bright as redcurrant jelly. You have to hold your nose close to smell the warm, spicy aroma, but the flavors bloom in the mouth. This reminds Robert of tropical fruit – he thinks it’s passion fruit or guava. But I think hawthorn jelly dwarfs guava jelly. In terms of taste, only rose jelly compares.
Put the hawthorns in a pot, barely covering them with water (about 6 cups will be needed). Simmer uncovered hawthorn for about an hour, mashing with a potato masher or spoon every 20 minutes or so.
Hawthorn Berry Ketchup
Drain the hawthorn juice through a coarse strainer and let it drip from the jelly bag for at least a few hours or up to overnight. Don’t worry if the juice looks cloudy. You should end up with 2¼ cups.
In a freezer saucepan, combine hawthorn juice with sugar and lemon juice. Over medium-high heat, bring the mixture to a boil, stirring. Increase the heat to high and bring the syrup to a boil until it comes out of the spoon or reaches 221 degrees Fahrenheit. Pour the hot syrup into two sterilized half-pint jars, then close the lids and rings. Process the jars in a boiling water bath for 5 min.
*The fruit of the Washington hawthorn (Cataegus phaenopyrum) has three to five seeds; other species of hawthorn are red, yellow, black, or purple with only one seed per fruit. C. phaenopyrum is native to the eastern states and is widely planted elsewhere in the landscape, although I don’t know why; its spiny shoots shoot randomly in all directions. But many other species of hawthorn grow in a similar fashion, so they are most appreciated as material for impenetrable hedges. The word haw actually means “hedge”. In addition to this, the genus has other advantages: the wood is so hard that it can be used to make tools, and its leaves, flowers and fruits have been used to treat heart disease since ancient times (recent medical studies have demonstrated their efficacy). The hawthorn variety most commonly used in jelly making is C. monogyna, native to Europe, Northwest Africa, and West Asia, and has become an invasive weed in Oregon and elsewhere. The origin here is Douglas Hawthorn, C. douglasii. Next year I will have to try making jelly with little black Douglas hawthorn. Some of the posts here may contain affiliate links. This means that if you click