So, when we woke up yesterday and turned to the last of the mulberries to finish de-twigging them, we discovered that they had disintegrated a bit overnight. No way were we going to get whole berries out of them. Fortunately, we had a plan!
Juicing very ripe mulberries is a walk in the park. We poured our remainder into a flour-sack towel and tied it to the handles of the top cupboards in the kitchen. (All done over a bowl, as the juice was already pouring out.) Then I squeezed until no more juice would come out. This took a while…mulberries are really very juicy. I let it hang for a few hours while I was making and canning jam.
When I was ready to make the syrup, I measured the juice and added an equal amount of sugar to it. Then I put it in a saucepan on medium-high heat and cooked until the sugar dissolved, and then I turned it down to medium-low until it reduced by about half. Alton Brown says that something like this should take about an hour; either he’s lying or I’m doing it wrong (both are possible) because it took mine about two hours and I had to turn it considerably higher than medium-low to get it to do anything more than sit there being warm.
Still: end result? Syrup.
So here’s the down and dirty:
Fruit Juice Syrup
Ingredients
- 100% Fruit Juice (fresh or from concentrate)
- Sugar – amount equal to your juice
- Optional: 1/4 tbsp lemon juice per cup of fruit juice, best for sweeter juices. (I didn’t add this for the mulberry.)
Directions:
- Add juice and sugar to saucepan. Cook on medium high heat until sugar is fully incorporated.
- Reduce heat so that your mixture is just below boiling. (Boiling won’t hurt your syrup really, but it will make it foamier.)
- Cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture reduces by half. (May take an hour or more.)
- Remove from heat and allow to cool before transferring to a glass jar.
- Store in the fridge for up to 6 months – although I suspect you won’t need to keep it that long.
If we go back and get more mulberries, I’m going to try water bath canning some syrup so we can have the sticky, sweet – peculiarly tangy – mulberry syrup long after the last berries have fallen.
Awesome use of mulberries. People used to tell me you couldn’t use them for anything – balderdash! They make wonderful pancakes and cobblers.
However – you might consider investing $1 at a yard sale for a fruit press, or foley press. you would still run the juice through a cheesecloth to get a pretty clear jelly, but it does the work faster and cleaner and they boys would beg to help 😀
Oh, I will definitely be getting a food mill of some sort! 😛
MMMMMMM, sounds really really good. I remember my mother canning syrup all the time. In fact, my mother canned EVERYthing–including trout, shredded potatoes, etc.
It looks delicious. I’ll make this one later. Do you still have any other recipes similar to this one? Thanks for sharing.