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Award-winning chef, author and forager Alan Bergo. Food is all around you.

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Sweet and Sour Chokeberry or Elderberry Syrup

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Chokeberry or aronia berry syrup recipeLately the chokeberries / aronia berries have been floating around the brunch menu, but I often like to have my pastry chef use them on different desserts, they might be mixed together with other fruits like apples, other berries, really whatever we have on hand that will make a good partner.

The berries are great since they don’t have seeds, but they do have tough skins, so I mostly juice them by cooking them in water, mashing a bit, and straining it off–the same way that conventional aronia or chokeberry juice you’ll see in the store is made.

Chokeberry or aronia berry syrup recipe

The syrup is fine for canning in any size you like-just scale the recipe up to your needs.

One of the simplest things I’ve been making is just a sweet and sour syrup with the berries. Some berries, raspberries and all their allies for example, are naturally tart are fine simmered with sugar and pinch of lemon. Aronia berries, as well as elderberries are similar in that they have a sort of one-note flavor (the berries can be used interchangeably in this recipe). They’re not one-note in a bad way, but they don’t have natural tartness, so making syrup with them made only with sugar and juice, while it looks fantastic, will taste dull and cloyingly sweet, and just generally don’t like things made from pure sugar.

Chokeberry or aronia berry syrup recipe

Chokeberries give a deep red, rich color, almost like chokecherries. Sometimes I might add some warmed berries to the syrup, since I don’t mind a few on a dessert. Pictured is with panna cotta.

To add balance to the syrup, as well as bolster it’s shelf-stability, I employ one of my favorite techniques for working with dark fruit: vinegar. Vinegar adds needed tartness to cut the sugar, lowers the pH for stability, but most importantly, is the perfect compliment for the berry flavor, and using something like my berry infused vinegar, or fruit scrap vinegar are really good flavor building blocks to consider too.

Use Ideas 

Pancakes, etc

While I’ve been running it on my brunch menu, it’s been a staple on crepes made with wild rice flour, as well as deserts like panna cotta pictured above. It’s also good as a flavoring for ice cream and other custards, but is just as good simply drizzled on all the above.

Using the syrup to cook other fruits

One of my favorites, is using syrups like this to cook other fruit, especially things like apples. Take a few baking apple, peel and core it and cut it into two halves, then put into a plastic bag with 1/2 cup or so of the syrup, or enough so that they’ll be coated. Take that bag, seal it, and then vacuum seal in another bag. Finally cook in a sous vide water bath at 145 F for 2 hours, then chill and allow to sit for a day or two to infuse. Remove the fruit and reheat with a knob of butter and their sauce and spoon hot over ice cream, yogurt, etc. –a dish I brought on the road once to serve vegan models at a remote photo shoot. You could also simply bake the cut apples with the syrup and bit of water baked in a slow oven until tender, basting occasionally with the syrup, and making sure the pan doesn’t dry out.

Chokeberry or aronia berry syrup recipe
Print Recipe
5 from 2 votes

Sweet and Sour Chokeberry or Elderberry Syrup

This is a simple, trusty berry syrup ratio for a home batch scaled from a gallon restaurant batch, it can be scaled up as you like.  Yield: about 2 cups
Prep Time5 mins
Cook Time20 mins
Course: Snack
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Aronia Berry, Birch syrup, Chokeberry, Preserves

Ingredients

  • 2 cups frozen or fresh chokeberries picked over for stems and washed to remove grit if using fresh
  • 1.5 cups sugar
  • 3/4 cups highest quality red wine vinegar I like Beaufort
  • 3/4 cups water
  • 1/4 tsp chopped ginger
  • 1/4 of a fresh vanilla bean scraped, or a dash of extract (optional)

Instructions

  • Bring all the ingredients to a simmer in a non-reactive sauce pot, about 2 qt size.
  • Mash the berries around with a potato masher or pulse very gently with a handblender to activate the deep color, but don't puree it completely.
  • Save the scrap for making berry scrap vinegar if you like. Simmer gently until the liquid is reduced by about 25%, being careful not to over-reduce the liquid or caramelize the berries in any way, which will destroy the flavor. When the syrup lightly coats the back of a spoon, turn the heat off.
  • Strain the liquid through a fine strainer, then reserve until needed. Remember the syrup will tighten up a bit as it cools too, so resist the urge to over reduce it--you can always cook it a bit more.
  • Transfer the syrup to jar or similar container. The syrup will keep near indefinitely in a tightly sealed container in the fridge and could also be water bath canned.

 

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Joseph Bahr

    August 24, 2020 at 9:33 am

    5 stars
    Just made a batch of this over the weekend and I love this above all other elderberry syrup recipes out there. The red wine vinegar compliments the berries perfectly. Partnered with a local organic elderberry farm for the berries.

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I made vegan fish sauce from ramp juice. You tak I made vegan fish sauce from ramp juice. 

You take the pure juice of the leaves, mix it with salt, Koji rice, and more chopped fresh ramp leaves, then ferment it for a bit. 

After the fermentation you put it into a dehydrator and cook it at 145-150 F for 30 days. 

The slow heat causes a Maillard/browning reaction over time. 

After 30 days you strain the liquid and bottle it. It’s the closest thing to plant-based fish sauce I’ve had yet. 

The potency of ramps is a pretty darn good approximation of the glutamates in meat. But you could prob make something similar with combinations of other alliums. 

The taste is crazy. I get toasted ramp, followed by mellow notes from the fermentation. Potent and delicate at the same time. 

I’ve been using it to make simple Japanese-style dipping sauces for tempura etc. 

Pics: 
2: Ramp juice 
3: Juicy leaf pulp 
4: Squeezing excess juice from the pulp
5: After 5 days at 145F 
6: After 30 days 
7: Straining through Muslin to finish

#ramps #veganfishsauce #experimentalfood #kojibuildscommunity #fermentation #foraging
Oeufs de Gaulle is a classic morel recipe Jacques Oeufs de Gaulle is a classic morel recipe Jacques Pepin used to make for French president Charles de Gaulle. 

You bake eggs in a ramekin with shrimp topped with creamy morel sauce and eat with toast points. 

Makes for a really special brunch or breakfast. Recipe’s on my site, but it’s even better to watch Jacques make it on you tube. 

#jacquespepin #morels #shrimp #morilles #brunchtime
Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each instead of the pound. 

Good day today, although my Twin Cities spots seem a full two weeks behind from the late spring. 2 hours south they were almost all mature. 

76 for me and 152 for the group. Check your spots, and good luck! 

#morels #murkels #mollymoochers #drylandfish #spongemushroom #theprecious
The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natu The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natural secretion of water I typically see with plants. 

I understand it as an indicator that the mushrooms are growing rapidly, and a byproduct of their metabolism speeding up. If you have some clarifications, chime in. 

Most people know it from Hydnellum 
peckii-another polypore. I’ve never seen it on pheasant backs before.

Morels are coming soon too. Mine were 1 inch tall yesterday in the Twin Cities. 

#guttation #mushroomhunting #cerioporussquamosus #pheasantback #naturesbeauty
Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a grocery store. 

#groceryshopping #sochan #rudbeckialaciniata #foraging
Italian wild food traditions are some of my favori Italian wild food traditions are some of my favorite. 

Case in point: preboggion, a mixture of wild plants, that, depending on the reference, should be made with 5-23 individual plants. 

Here’s a few mixtures I’ve made this spring, along with a reference from the Oxford companion to Italian food. 

The mixture should include some bitter greens (typically assorted asters) but the most important plant is probably borage. 

Making your own version is a good excercise. Here they’re wilted with garlic and oil, but there’s a bunch of traditional recipes the mixture is used in. 

Can you believe this got cut from my book?!

#preboggion #preboggiun #foraging #traditionalfoods
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