We all love winter for the New Year and Christmas holidays, for warm cozy family evenings, for the crunch of snow under our feet. But we must not forget that in addition to this, the winter period is fraught with a lot of dangers, such as colds, cold or seasonal illnesses, as a result of which our immunity inevitably weakens and requires additional strengthening agents. Today we’ll talk about how to keep viburnum for a long time, so that a reliable cold remedy is at hand for the entire period of cold weather.
Viburnum collection rules
Viburnum berries are a real storehouse of useful substances and minerals. Dried – they are indispensable for making fragrant tea, fresh – for making compotes, jams or fruit drinks.
In order for viburnum dishes to be not only as healthy as possible, but to have unsurpassed taste, it is important not only to properly prepare the fruits for further processing, but also to follow several harvesting rules:
- berries reach technical ripeness by the beginning of September, but it is strongly recommended to harvest the crop when the first frosts come. This is due to the fact that viburnum berries have a bitter tint, and after they “get acquainted” with a light frost, this effect disappears, and the berries become juicy and sweet;
- harvesting is carried out in dry, not too windy weather;
- bunches of viburnum are cut with scissors, very carefully, making sure that the berries do not crumble and do not wrinkle.
Fresh storage
And now all the bunches of viburnum are collected, carefully laid out in baskets, now it’s up to the small thing – to decide how best to save them for the winter.
Of course, the best option is to save the berries in a fresh, natural form. At home, a cold room is suitable for this, for example, a cellar (there you need to pull the ropes and carefully hang the clusters for the winter) or an ordinary refrigerator (the clusters are laid out in dry containers, covered with a lid and stored on a special shelf designed for vegetables). In this form, viburnum can be stored not only for the winter, but also for up to six months.
Other storage methods
When it is not possible to keep viburnum berries fresh, you can resort to other methods. There are several popular options for storing viburnum without sacrificing its beneficial properties.
Frozen storage. Viburnum berries are picked from bunches, packaged in portioned packages, and then sent to the freezer for the whole winter. Such a viburnum can be easily obtained at the first request, and used for its intended purpose – to make tea, fruit drink or vitamin compote. As we have already found out, frost has a beneficial effect on the taste of berries, so your dishes will not suffer, but only benefit.
Dried viburnum. To prepare dried viburnum for the winter, it is pre-washed, placed on a baking sheet lined with parchment and sent to a slightly heated (up to 60 degrees) oven without closing the door. If there is nowhere to hurry, you can dry the berries on the street: for this, you should choose a shaded place and place clusters of viburnum on textile napkins there, or you can simply tie the bunches in bunches and hang them up. When the viburnum is completely dry, it is carefully cut off and stored in a tightly sealed container (or cloth bags).
Viburnum juice. This method will require some effort: for one serving of juice you will need 2 kg of berries, 500 g of water and 200 g of granulated sugar for each liter of berry juice. Pure berries are boiled for several minutes, squeezed and the resulting liquid is mixed with the rest of the ingredients. All this must be brought to a boil and poured into pre-sterilized jars. Corked containers with ready-made juice are sent to a cold place for the winter.
Viburnum jam is prepared from the same set of products as juice, only using a different technology. Berries (1 kg) are washed, blanched in boiling water, poured with syrup (300 ml of water and 1,3 kg of granulated sugar) and left to infuse for 12 hours. Next, the prepared mass is put on low heat and boiled for 30 minutes until thickened. The finished jam is laid out in sterilized jars, stored in a cool place.
Viburnum grated with sugar is a very simple recipe that allows you to preserve the properties, taste and aroma of viburnum for the whole winter. The berries are simply ground with sugar in equal proportions, subjected to 30-minute pasteurization and, having corked, sent to be stored in a cool place.
Viburnum vitamin syrup is prepared from viburnum juice (we described the process of its preparation above). It is mixed with sugar in a 1:2 ratio (1 part of juice and 2 parts of granulated sugar), a pinch of citric acid is added and boiled until the sugar is completely dissolved. This product should be stored in sealed bottles.
Pastila is not quite a traditional way to prepare viburnum for the winter. Blanched berries (1 kg) are poured with water (250 ml), boiled over low heat until soft. The resulting mass must be rubbed through a sieve, mixed with sugar (1 kg), then boiled over low heat until the consistency of thin sour cream. The mass prepared in this way is poured into a thin layer on a baking sheet, previously lined with baking paper, and sent to the oven with a temperature of 50-60 degrees. You can tell if the marshmallow is ready by how easily it peels away from the parchment. The finished dish is rolled up, cut into portions, sprinkled with powdered sugar and put into cardboard boxes, sent for storage in a cool room with good ventilation.
Kalina with sugar. To cope with such a preparation, you need to stock up on powdered sugar (200 g), starch (you will need no more than 5 g), viburnum berries (1 kg). Pre-washed viburnum is sprinkled with sugar mixed with starch, and sent to dry for 12 hours in a slightly warm oven. The finished sugar viburnum is laid out in jars and stored under lids in a cool place.
Morse – is more of a vitamin cocktail than an independent preparation, because it is made from viburnum juice. The recipe is extremely simple: dilute 0,5 liters of juice with 2 liters of water, add 250 g of sugar, and bring to a boil. When the granulated sugar is completely dissolved, the juice is turned off, insisted for several hours. Of course, you can’t save such a drink for the whole winter, but it is quite capable of supporting the body with vitamins and useful trace elements in the cold.
These are far from all the ways in which priceless berries can be preserved: there are many recipes for viburnum jam or jam with other ingredients (honey, mountain ash, citrus fruits), which only enhance the beneficial properties of viburnum. But this is already more reminiscent of confectionery delights, which we will definitely talk about in future articles.
Video “Blanks from viburnum”
The author of this video shows how he makes viburnum preparations for the future: marmalade, pie fillings and fruit drinks.
