Highbush Cranberries

Vibrunum trilobum. The best way I've found to separate them from V. opulus that tastes terrible, is to taste them.

Highbush cranberries, or Viburnum trilobum and similar. Many people know highbush cranberries as a stinky, bitter berry, but that is a different species from the berries I cook with. If you're new to these berries, see my introductory post on highbush cranberries first.

Highbush Cranberry Vodka

Highbush cranberry vodka is a love letter to my foraging friends living and from Eastern Europe. In Russia (and likely other areas) Highbush cranberries are known as Kalinka, and, at least from my experience, if you ask someone from Eastern Europe the what the best thing to do with highbush cranberries are, they’re probably going…

Highbush Cranberry Tkemali

The cuisine of Georgia and the Caucasus offers a lot of inspiration for the adventurous cook and forager, and Tkemali sauce (Tee-guh-molly) is one of the crown jewels of their cuisine—a sort of ketchup like condiment rich with garlic, hot chilies and spices like fenugreek and coriander that would make a shoe taste good. It’s…

Highbush Cranberry Hot Sauce

Highbush cranberries are a great fruit: they’re easy to harvest, bountiful when you find a good patch, and reliable, as birds seem to leave them on the tree longer than others, at least from my experience. The fruit makes a great jelly, pates de fruits, traditional cranberry sauce, colored apple sauce–they’re a great addition…

Highbush Cranberry-Ginger Jelly

The more I cook with Highbush cranberries The more I enjoy them, and one of the best things they can become is a brilliant red jelly. Highbush cranberries are not the easiest thing to make into jelly, and I should know, I’ve been testing this recipe for a couple years now, and am only sharing…

Highbush Cranberry Sauce

If you’ve ever cooked with highbush cranberries, if you’re like me, the first thing you did was probably try to imitate cranberry sauce. This is my simple version. The flavor of the two fruits is kind of similar, but highbush cranberries are juicy, juicy, and make a brilliant red liquid and coulis. Regular cranberries really…

Fruit Scrap Vinegar

If you harvest your own fruit–any kind of fruit–you know how many leftover skins, seeds, pits, cooked stuff, raw stuff, and all kinds of other things are leftover from processing. So much scrap, from so much good fruit. If you’re anything like me, you may have wondered if there’s anything you can do with it….