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Apricot compote for the winter, harvested in the summer when fruits can be bought at a very attractive price or even harvested in your own garden, will serve as an excellent alternative to many store-bought juices and drinks.
Cooking tips
One of the features of making compote from apricots is the use of ripe, but at the same time dense and not overripe fruits for these purposes. If you want to use unripe fruits for compote, then the drink from them may have a bitter taste. And overripe apricots will definitely soften during heat treatment, and the compote will become not very beautiful, cloudy.
Apricot compote for the winter can be prepared both from whole fruits, and from halves and even slices. But keep in mind that compote from whole apricots should be consumed first so that it is not stored for more than a year. With longer storage in the bones, there is an accumulation of a toxic substance – hydrocyanic acid.
To obtain especially tender fruits, apricots are peeled before laying. To make it easier, the fruits are first scalded with boiling water, after which the peel from the apricots comes off quite easily.
The best apricot compote recipes
The variety of recipes for making compotes from apricots for the winter is great – choose to your taste: from the simplest to the most complex with various additives.
Classic of halves
According to this recipe, our grandmothers prepared compote from apricots.
Prepare:
- 5-6 liters of purified water;
- 2,5 kg of apricots, pitted;
- 3 cup of granulated sugar;
- 7 g citric acid.
You will also need carefully washed and sterilized glass jars of any size.
According to this recipe, ready-made compote can be drunk immediately without diluting it with water.
Now you need to cook the syrup with sugar and citric acid, which acts both as an additional preservative and as a taste optimizer. Heat the water to a boil, add sugar and citric acid and boil for about 5-6 minutes. Carefully pour the fruit jars with hot syrup and place them for sterilization. In hot water, three-liter jars are sterilized for 20 minutes, two-liter jars – 15, liter – 10 minutes.
After the end of the procedure, the jars are rolled up and left to cool in the room.
From whole apricots without sterilization
To make compote from apricots according to this recipe, the fruits only need to be thoroughly washed and dried. If you count the components for a three-liter jar, then you need to take from 1,5 to 2 kg of fruit, from 1 to 1,5 liters of water and about 300 grams of sugar.
Fill the jar with apricots and pour boiling water almost up to the neck. After 1-2 minutes, drain the water into a saucepan, add sugar there and heat to 100 ° C, boil for 5-7 minutes.
Pour apricots again with hot syrup with sugar and leave for 10-15 minutes. After that, the syrup is carefully drained and brought to a boil again. After the third filling of fruits with hot syrup, they are immediately hermetically sealed and cooled.
Concentrated
Compote made according to this recipe, when used, will definitely need to be diluted with water two, or even three or four times. For this, it is necessary to use exclusively boiled or special drinking water.
The syrup is prepared thicker – take about 1-500 g of sugar per 600 liter of water. And you fill the jars with apricots approximately shoulder-length. In all other respects, you can act both in the recipe with sterilization and without it – pour boiling syrup over the fruits several times.
with nucleoli
Traditionally, jam is made with apricot kernels, but a thick concentrated apricot compote will also receive additional flavor from the kernels.
Apricots must first be divided into halves, freed from stones and the nucleoli removed from them.
The kernels should be sweet and tasty almost like almonds. Fill jars with halves of fruit, pouring them with nucleoli to half – ¾ of the volume of the container. After that, the syrup is boiled, as usual (1 g of sugar is put into 500 liter of water). Pour apricots with hot syrup and sterilize them as indicated in the first recipe.
With honey
Apricot compote with honey is a special recipe for those with a sweet tooth, since even not too sweet fruits in this compote acquire a truly honey taste and aroma.
Apricots are divided into halves, the stones are removed from them, and the fruits are laid out in sterilized jars, filling them about halfway. Meanwhile, syrup is being prepared for pouring: 2 grams of honey is taken for 750 liters of water. Everything is mixed, brought to a boil, and the fruits in jars are poured with the resulting honey syrup. After that, the jars are sterilized according to the instructions from the first recipe.
With rum without sterilization
Fans of everything unusual will definitely appreciate the recipe for apricot compote with the addition of rum. If this drink could not be found anywhere, then it can be replaced with cognac. For 3 kg of apricots, you will need about 1,5 liters of water, 1 kg of granulated sugar, and about 1,5 tablespoons of rum.
First you have to remove the skin from the apricots.
The skin after these procedures peels off itself. It remains only to carefully cut the fruit into two parts and free them from the seeds.
In the future, the method of preparation is extremely simple. Fruits are carefully placed in liter glass jars and poured with hot sugar syrup. At the very end, a little is added to each jar, a teaspoon of rum. Banks are immediately twisted, turned over with a lid down and left to cool completely.
Compote of apricots and cherries
According to some hostesses, the simplest recipe for making apricot compote for the winter is the following.
First you need to find the following ingredients:
- 4 kg apricots;
- 2 kg of cherries;
- 1 small bunch of mint;
- 6-8 liters of water;
- 5 glasses of white sugar;
- 8 g of citric acid.
Rinse the fruits of apricots and cherries well, free them from twigs and other contaminants and put them on a towel to dry. It is not necessary to remove the bones.
Sterilize appropriately sized jars and metal lids.
Абрикосы и вишни разложите по стерильным банкам, заполняя их от 1/3 до 2/3 в зависимости от того, какой концентрации компот вы хотите получить. Смешайте воду с сахаром и лимонной кислотой и, доведя до кипения, немного проварите, в самом конце варки добавьте нарезанную небольшими веточками мяту. Залейте кипящим сиропом банки с фруктами так, чтобы сироп практически выливался из них. Тотчас же закрутите банки горячими стерильными крышками, переверните и, укутав теплыми вещами, поставьте остывать.
In the same way, you can cook apricot compote for the winter with the addition of various berries: black and red currants, gooseberries, strawberries, cranberries, lingonberries and others.
Compote of apricots and plums
But if you want to make compote from apricots with plums, then it is better to cut both fruits into two halves before putting them in a jar and separate the bones from them. Then you can proceed in exactly the same way as described above. In halves, the fruit will look more aesthetically pleasing and will release more juice and flavor, coloring the compote in a beautiful color.
With frozen berries
Apricots ripen at different times depending on the variety, and their ripening time does not always coincide with the ripening period of other berries and fruits that you would like to use to make compote for the winter. In this case, apricot compote can be prepared using even frozen berries. In this case, they act a little differently.
Apricots are prepared in the traditional way: washed and dried on a paper towel. It is advisable not to defrost frozen berries on purpose, but only rinse several times in a colander in water at room temperature, after which they will remain cold, but the ice will already leave them.
Apricots are laid out in jars and covered with sugar on top, based on one liter jar – 200 grams of sugar. At the same time, the berries are placed in a separate pan and filled with water. For each liter jar, you should expect to use about 0,5 liters of water. The number of berries can be arbitrary and depends on your taste and capabilities. Berries in water are brought to a boil, and then carefully laid out evenly over jars of apricots, pouring water on top. Banks are covered with lids and set aside for 15-20 minutes for impregnation. Then, through a special lid with holes, the liquid is drained back into the pan and brought to a boil again. Apricots with berries are poured with hot liquid again and this time they are finally sealed with heated and sterilized lids.
A beautiful and tasty assortment of apricots with berries for the winter is ready.
From dried apricots
Many happy owners of the garden dry apricots in the form of dried apricots or apricots for the winter, while others like to buy and enjoy it in the cold season. If you did not have time to prepare apricot compote in the summer during the fruit ripening season, then you always have the opportunity to treat yourself and your family by cooking delicious apricot compote from dried apricots at any time in late autumn, winter or spring.
200 grams of dried apricots is enough to prepare 2-2,5 liters of delicious compote. Dried apricots must be sorted out, rinsed well in cold water, and then scalded with boiling water in a colander.
Take a three-liter enameled or stainless metal pan, pour scalded dry apricots into it, pour 2 liters of cold water and put on medium heat.
When the water boils, add 200-300 grams of sugar to the water, depending on the initial sweetness of dried apricots. Apricots should be allowed to boil for at least 5 minutes. If the fruit is very dry, then the cooking time can be increased to 10-15 minutes.
Then the prepared compote should be covered with a lid and let it brew.
Conclusion
Preparing apricot compote will not take you much time, but it will allow you to enjoy a natural winter drink with alluring aromas of summer, which can decorate both an ordinary dinner and any festive feast.
