Homemade blueberry syrup: popular recipes for making blueberry syrup for the winter
Blueberries are famous for their beneficial properties. Including enough berries in your diet every day can strengthen and even restore your vision. The problem is that the season for fresh fruits is short-lived, so housewives come to the aid of various blueberry preparations that will allow them to enjoy the taste of summer all winter long.
Time to bookmark: Summer
You can have blueberries to freeze, dry or cook from it, for example, blueberry jam or jam. Syrups have become very popular lately. You can easily buy them at any store or pharmacy, but it is best to make such a preparation yourself. This procedure will not take much time, and the benefits from a homemade product will be much greater.
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Collection and preparation of berries
You can pick blueberries in the forest yourself. This is a rather painstaking task, but you will definitely be confident in the quality of the berries. If foraging is not your thing, blueberries can be purchased in season at your local market. If the blueberry in the forest has already stopped bearing fruit, frozen berries are also suitable for making syrup.
Whether or not to wash blueberries before cooking is up to you.If you picked the berries yourself, then you can simply rinse the fruits of the forest with water, but if the blueberries were purchased at the market, then you should rinse them more thoroughly. A frozen product does not require additional manipulations before cooking.
Popular Blueberry Syrup Recipes
No cooking
Any amount of clean ripe blueberries is covered with granulated sugar in a 1:1 ratio. Gently mix the mixture with a wooden spatula or spoon and cover with a lid. This bowl of candied blueberries should sit in the refrigerator for 10 to 20 hours. The main goal is to achieve the juice separation of the berries and wait for the grains to dissolve. To speed up the process, the berries are mixed several times during this time. After the set time, the bowl is placed on the fire and the berries are slightly warmed for better dissolution of the sugar, but do not boil the mass. The heating temperature should be no higher than 70 degrees. After the last sand crystals have dissolved, the blueberries are transferred to a sieve lined with gauze. It is better to make several layers of fabric. In this form, the blueberries are left to flow around. Under no circumstances should you grind the berries.
The result is a delicious, rich and very healthy blueberry syrup. A huge advantage of this preparation is that high temperatures are not used in its preparation, so this dessert contains the maximum amount of vitamins. Store syrup in clean bottles or jars in the refrigerator for no more than 2 months.
With added water
Place a kilogram of blueberries in a saucepan with a wide bottom. The fruits are crushed with a masher or fork, trying to disrupt their structure as much as possible. Add 1.5 cups of sugar and the zest of half a lemon to the blueberries. The container is placed on the fire and heated for 5 minutes.
After this procedure, the blueberries are transferred to a fine sieve and ground. As a result, only small seeds and boiled zest remain on the grill.
In a separate pan, prepare sugar syrup from 1 cup of water and 1.5 cups of sugar. Cooking time – 10 minutes. Add blueberry juice obtained in the previous step and 1 tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice to the thickened sweet liquid. The blueberry dessert is brought to readiness within 2 minutes and poured into jars while hot.
From frozen blueberries
Place the blueberries in a deep plate and cover with the same volume of granulated sugar. There is no need to thaw the berries first. The berries are thoroughly mixed and sent to the top shelf of the main compartment of the refrigerator for gradual defrosting. As they thaw, the blueberries will release juice, which will dissolve the sugar crystals. A day later, the fruits in the sweet juice are placed on the fire and boiled for 5 minutes. After this, the mass is poured onto the finest sieve or onto several layers of gauze. The berries are lightly squeezed without pressing them. The cake is eaten, and the syrup is put on fire for 5 minutes. Afterwards, the workpiece is packaged in bottles and tightly screwed on with sterile caps.
From berries with blueberry leaves
Blueberry leaves also contain a huge amount of useful substances and are used as an independent product for brewing tea. To enhance the medicinal properties of blueberry syrup, it is brewed not only from the tender berries, but also from the leaves.
A kilogram of berries and 100 pieces of small blueberry leaves are placed in boiling sugar syrup. The base is prepared from 500 grams of sugar and 350 milliliters of water. Bring the mixture to a boil and turn off the heat. Allow the workpiece to cool completely.After this, the berries and leaves are removed from the infusion, and the syrup is boiled again. The procedure is repeated 3 times. The finished syrup is filtered and boiled for 3 minutes before pouring into sterile jars.
A video from the INDIA AYURVEDA channel will tell you how to prepare delicious blueberry syrup.
How to store blueberry syrup
Blueberry syrup can be stored the old fashioned way in tightly sealed jars in the refrigerator or cellar. The shelf life of such preparations ranges from 2 months to a year and depends on whether the syrup has been subjected to high-temperature heat treatment. Those with large freezers freeze cubes of blueberry syrup. This preparation can be stored in a sealed bag for up to 1.5 years.