How great is the power of art! After reading The Master and Margarita, for some reason, for a long time, I still want fiery borscht with a marrow bone, like in Pelageya Antonovna’s saucepan. And after “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”, I dream of trying Ukrainian plum brandy.
No, not slivovitz – this strong plum-based distillate is often confused with slivyanka. Slivyanka is a thick, slightly viscous, slightly sour and fragrant liqueur. Strictly speaking, I can’t call it a liquor either – they sometimes prepare slivyanka without sugar at all.
The story was shared by blog subscriber Anton.
Why I decided to cook plum
This year we have a lot of plums, we had to put them somewhere. The wife prepared tkemali sauce, twisted compote, jam, even made marshmallows. And the flow didn’t end.
That’s when I remembered my old idea – to try homemade plum. There is drinking alcohol in the house, and I decided to experiment with it.
Slivyanka is a medium-strength alcoholic drink. The taste is sweetish-sour, with a pronounced aroma of plums. It is made by infusing fresh plum raw materials with alcohol or vodka with the addition of sugar or molasses.
The finished drink in industrial production was infused for two days. In home production, the terms are usually different.
What did I need for this
It is believed that different varieties are suitable for slivyanka (for example, Canadian plum, mirabelle, renklod), but most often they take the unpretentious and ubiquitous Hungarian plum.
In general, from experience I can say that the darker the plum, the more saturated and dark the color of the drink will be. I tried with the Mirabelle variety, but for the sake of experiment I did a little with the red plum.
Important! It is believed that plums should only be pitted, because the pits contain hydrocyanic acid. But how then compotes with cherries, which we fill with boiling water, keep in bins for a year and drink with pleasure?
This is what I ended up with – the product is darker in real life, the photo does not convey colors well
In general, I do this and that. There are recipes on the Internet with and without bones. I made both with pits and peeled plums. Where there was a bone, and the aroma was more pronounced.
From alcohol, alcohol, vodka, and good moonshine are also suitable. Our task is to enrich and slightly dilute strong alcohol with plum juice.
Therefore, if there is, as in my case, alcohol, take it. If there is a good chacha or purified moonshine from other raw materials, it is also good, as long as the “base” does not have an unpleasant smell.
My recipe
Classically, you need sugar. I have made both with and without sugar. Then I tried a sweet liqueur – delicious, pleasant sweetness felt good.
But still, for my taste, the one that is without sugar is better drunk, it “lays down” more calmly and does not cause headaches and other side effects in the morning. And from sweet liqueurs, some people complain of a hangover.
With sugar on alcohol
You will need:
- 200 ml of pure alcohol;
- 2 kg plums;
- Xnumx g of granulated sugar.
Cooking:
- Take pitted plums.
Advice! If the plums do not give the pits well, you need to press the plum from the blunt end with a pencil or the blunt end of the sushi stick and gently squeeze out the pit. If the plum is not ripe, it is more difficult to do this, but it is worth a try. And if it doesn’t work out, fill it right with the bones.
I had the usual blue plums and a five-liter bottle of the purest factory alcohol – stocks in case of a pandemic
- Alcohol and dilute in order to get a 40-degree drink.
- Put the plums into a jar, cut into pieces.
- Fill with alcohol.
- Let stand in a dark place for a week. Then strain, pour into another jar, close the lid.
- Put sugar in the remaining cake. Let it sit for a few more days. Drain the sweet syrup, squeeze the mass.
- Combine with infused solution, mix and strain through gauze to exclude various small inclusions.
- Pour into bottles to keep. By the New Year, you will get an excellent slivyanka.
Sugar free with bones
No knife can separate such a plum from the seeds, so I had to use the whole fruit. And it’s okay, it even tasted better
If the plum is not pitted, then the second method is quite suitable.
Just take a three-liter glass jar. Put the washed and dried whole plums into it, shaking it to reach the shoulders.
Pour vodka, moonshine or alcohol diluted to 40 degrees with water into a jar. Close the lid and let it stand in a dark place for a month. The longer it sits, the richer the taste and aroma.
Drain the drink, bottle it.
In conclusion
Slivyanka turns out either sweet, as it should be in liquor, or it comes out with a pleasant sourness. It is good to serve it with dessert – under cakes, a cake, and just when you want delicious alcohol. By the way, I always feel sorry for throwing away whole plums.
They hold up great, so you could use them for some homemade liquor candies or cake decorating.
But you can’t do this! It is in plums that all the most harmful and nasty things that are in alcohol accumulate. Especially if the plum was with a stone!
General impression: the drink came out delicious, it is easy to drink, the sweet version is for girls, without sugar is a male theme, if someone prefers not very strong alcohol. How do you feel about liqueurs? Cook yourself, did you eat at a party? I think this one is worth a try.