Chokecherry Syrup Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the best way to juice chokecherries? ›

To extract the juice, clean the cherries and pour into a large pot, adding just enough water to cover. Simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the fruits are soft and have released their juice, about 30 minutes. Gently strain through a jelly bag or cheesecloth-lined colander into a bowl.

An old-time Montana favorite, the tart, sweet 'cherry' flavor always has customers saying “it's just like grandma used to make it.” Another wilderness delight for your pancakes, French toast, and waffles.

Combine the chokecherries and water in a large kettle. Cover and bring to a boil, then simmer for 15 minutes.

To extract the juice, place the cleaned chokecherries in a large pot and add enough water to just barely cover them. Put them on the stove and allow to come to a boil, then reduce to simmer. After about 30 minutes, the berries will have released their juice. The liquid in the pot will be opaque and a dark mauve color.

Wash and de-stem the chokecherries. Add chokecherries to water and bring to a boil, then lower heat to simmer. Stir occasionally. Boil until seeds fall out.

They contain amygdalin, a product the body converts into cyanide, a deadly poison, after consumption. However, people usually don't eat cherry pits, not even those as small as the ones found in chokecherries.

The chokecherry fruit gall midge is a tiny fly that causes direct damage to the fruit. Adults emerge from overwintering pupae in late May and lay their eggs in the flowers. Tiny yellowish-orange maggots feed on the developing fruit.

Chokecherry tea was used to treat everything from anxiety to colds, diarrhea and tuberculosis. Berries were eaten to relieve stomach pain and aid digestion. A common remedy for head colds involved grinding and smoking chokecherry bark like tobacco (Scully, 147).

The slightly tart fruit is ripe in late July and August. Chokecherry berries were one of the main ingredients in a food commonly used by Plains Indians known as pemmican.

Collecting the Fruit

Such cherries will taste immensely better than those hastily collected as soon as they darken, as their astringency will be greatly reduced. The time to collect chokecherries is from the middle of August into early September.

How do I know when my syrup is done? ›

In professional maple syrup production, the maple syrup maker will boil anywhere from about five gallons to 13 gallons of sap down to about a quart of maple syrup. When the syrup reaches 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the boiling point of water (212 degrees F), or 219 degrees F, the syrup should be done.

Stirring or bumping the pot can result in sugar clumping together and hardening into crystals. If you're making syrup with water, stir the sugar into the water to fully dissolve it before you add heat. Use a clean spoon every time you need to stir. The same goes for candy thermometers and any utensils.

Boil it more. Maple syrup is typically boiled down to 219 degrees Fahrenheit. If you have syrup that was boiled to less than that, or you like your syrup thicker than standard, just put it in a pot on the stove and boil it to your desired temperature.

For any kind of fruit or berry I use a steam juicer. I love it ! It gets all the juice, the pulp is pretty dry. You don't have to remove stems, seeds, or anything.

Chokecherries have a pit in the center that contains a naturally occurring hydrocyanic acid (also called prussic acid, a weak acid smelling of almonds). The process of either boiling or drying will neutralize the acid to make the food safe to eat. Traditionally, chokecherries are preserved by sun-drying.

Once harvested, I like to wash them in a colander and freeze them in quart-size freezer bags. When I want to make some chokecherry juice (the first step in making jelly, syrup, etc.), one bag of berries comes out of the freezer and, once thawed, goes in a pot with several cups of water.

Once I've finished juicing, I take the pulp from the top of my steam juicer and run it through a food mill to remove any seeds. Then, I sweeten the pulp just a little, and make fruit leather. Works great with crabapples, chokecherries, plums, grapes, prickly pears, and probably lots of other fruits I haven't tried yet.