What to do with elderberries?

[thursday]

A vendor at the farmer's market had elderberries for sale on Sunday, and I've always wanted to try them, so I bought a small bag - only now I don't know what to do with them! Jams and syrups seem to be the consensus, but there's not a lot of them. I'm guessing I have about a pound at most, including stems and small branches.

Any ideas?

[shaogo]

Sauce for venison.

[yankinparisot]

Elderberry wine is pretty popular in England.

I'm a bit puzzled though as the elderberries here (France) don't ripen until later in the year. Say, September/ October.

[bushwickgirl]

Well, the OP is located in Los Angeles, which has a different growing season. Here, in the Northeast US, the berries don't ripen until August/September.

[thursday]

Yup. Everything ripens way earlier here. It took me three years of attempting a garden before I realized that I needed to ignore the instructions and plant my tomatoes in February. By August, almost everything is withered from the heat.

[boyzoma]

I can vouch for the elderberry wine. Great!

[DonShirer]

And in Brooklyn, if you have ever seen "Arsenic and Old Lace"!

[CDouglas]

I drink elderberry tea all through the winter and I never get sick. In summer you could use the juice to make elderberry soda or even elderberry "pink" lemonade. Elderberry iced tea is great as well.

[bushwickgirl]

Yup, jam, jelly, actually, syrup and wine. We used to pick them wild in CT and make wine by the gallon, and we had a big bush in the pasture on the farm in PA when I was a kid; my mom made jelly from them. Since you really don't have much, make a small batch of syrup.

[nofunlatte]

I just saw a recipe for elderberry syrup in a cookbook. It calls for a pound of elderberries. I'm sure you could adjust it to fit the amount of berries you have. Let me know if you're interested.

[thursday]

Yes, please! It looks like some sort of syrup seems the way to go, though that's a little disappointing - I'm not really a syrup type of person. I wish I had enough for wine, but I think I'd get a thimbleful out of the amount of berries I have.

[nofunlatte]

Okay--here ya go! The source of this recipe is Darina Allen's Forgotten Skills of Cooking (just bought this Tuesday and am having a blast reading it!) The ingredients are:

1 lb elderberries
1 lb sugar to every 2 cups of juice
1 lemon (she calls for an organic lemon, since you will be removing the zest)

The directions are:

Remove the fruit from the stems and place them into a saucepan (stainless steel, according to her). Cover the berries with cold water and add the zest of the lemon. Then bring the whole thing to a boil, simmering until the elderberries become soft (she says about 20-30 minutes). Then you would strain the berries using muslin or a jelly bag (I don't know what that is, since I've never made jelly before--I assume a fine-mesh strainer would work, too). Measure the resulting juice you have after you strain the berries, which will dictate how much sugar you'll need. Use 1 lb sugar for every 2 cups of juice you wind up with and add it to the juice, along with the juice of the lemon you used for zesting. Bring the whole shebang to a boil and boil for about 10 minutes. Cool and then pour into sterilized bottles which you seal with a screw cap. Store in cool, dry place.

Some of her serving suggestions are:

put some into a glass and fill with sparkling water or wine or prosecco (I quite like THAT idea!) She also suggests adding some to hot whiskey, to which you add some boiling water and a few cloves. I imagine it might be nice in hot tea, too.

BTW, this book is really a great read! I haven't made this recipe (or any other from the book--been working on learning to grill pizza for now--but I have gotten the bug to make jams or jellies now that I'm reading this.

ETA: Allen also notes that elderberries freeze well buy putting them in plastic containers separated by parchment paper and that they are simple to stem once they're frozen. As shaogo noted, they can be used for game sauces.