A Fast, Simple, Delicious Elderberry Refrigerator Jam Made from Dried Elderberries
Got 30 minutes and some dried elderberries? Then you’ve got elderberry jam!
Got 30 minutes and some dried elderberries? Then you’ve got elderberry jam!
There’s no faster or easier elderberry jelly or jam recipe. Since it’s a refrigerator jam, this recipe requires no canning or processing after the jam is made. Fill the jars, pop in the fridge, and you’ve got one more easy way to incorporate the goodness of elderberryinto your everyday diet.
There’s no faster or easier elderberry jelly or jam recipe. Since it’s a refrigerator jam, this recipe requires no canning or processing after the jam is made. Fill the jars, pop in the fridge, and you’ve got one more easy way to incorporate the goodness of elderberryinto your everyday diet.
1 ¼ C honey (may substitute sugar, but reduce to 1 C and increase additional water to ¾ C)
Instructions:
Measure the ½ cup dried elderberries into a small glass bowl or two-cup glass measuring cup. Add the ¾ cup cold water to the dried berries. Cover and refrigerate overnight (or eight to twelve hours) to rehydrate berries. (Alternatively, if you are short on time, you may bring the water and berries to a low boil and then simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. Time permitting, rehydration is slightly better with the overnight cold-soak method, but either method will work. Read here for more on how to rehydrate dried elderberries for recipes.)
Pour the rehydrated elderberries and any remaining juice/water into a medium saucepan. Add the lemon juice and additional ½ cup water, stir to combine, then bring to a boil.
Remove from heat and carefully transfer the mixture into a blender or food processor. Keeping your hand on the lid of the blender, blend the berry mixture until a smooth, uniform consistency is reached (a few minutes).
Return the blended mixture to the pan. Sprinkle the powdered pectin over the berry mixture. Let rehydrate for one minute and stir to incorporate.
Stir constantly while heating and bring the mix to a full rolling boil that cannot be stirred down. Turn off the heat. Add the honey (or sugar). Stir to combine.
Heat, stir, and return the entire mixture to a rolling boil. Continue to boil for one minute, then remove from heat. Skim foam if necessary.
Pour the hot jam into jars. Cap and let cool for several hours. Refrigerator jam must be stored in the refrigerator, even before use, and is not considered shelf-stable at room temperature as it is not a canned product.
Yields three, eight-ounce jars of jam.
*This recipe originally appeared in The Complete Elderberry Tea Book. It has been adapted from a recipe from Frontier Co-Op, with changes made to improve sweetness and instructions. Enjoy!
*This post may contain affiliate links. Affiliate links help customers shop ad help support the costs and maintenance of this website by proving a small percentage income of sales to the site owner/affiliate, which helps to make this website and information-sharing possible. Affiliate sales do not increase the cost of products to buyers who utilize the convenient links included in this article. Thank You for your support!
New Book: THE COMPLETE ELDERBERRY TEA BOOK: MAKE YOUR OWN DELICIOUS, HEALTHFUL, HOMEMADE ELDERBERRY TEAS
Just the book we need to get us through this year!
I am a heavy drinker–of elderberry tea, that is.
There’s really no going wrong with elderberry tea with an antioxidant value and nutritional profile as high as it has, but elderberry teas also have the HUGE benefit of flavor. Elder tea is light and delicious, low-calorie, and is great with just a teaspoon of honey to help this tea–which doesn’t taste like medicine at all–go down.
Just In Time for Cold And Flu Season: DIY Elderberry Tea Book Release
I’ve been making my own elderberry teas for years. I find them to be much more interesting and enjoyable, and they give me greater variety. And save money, too! (PSST–They also make the best gifts!)
I’ve recently released my next book, The Complete Elderberry Tea Book: Make Your Own Delicious, Healthful, Homemade Elderberry Teas
It includes:
Over 25 recipes for homemade elderberry teas
Complete instructions for making teas
Instructions for harvesting and drying your own elderberries, herbs, and ingredients (if that’s your thing, but that’s optional)
BONUS RECIPES for elderberry syrups, elderflower syrup, wine mulling spices, and elderberry jam
All recipes use dried elderberry, herbs, and spices, all of which can be easily purchased online or at specialty stores. You do not need to grow your own elderberries to make these wonderful, relaxing, healthful teas! (But if you do, that’s covered, too!).
All You Need to Know to Make Homemade Elder Tea
Start to finish, it’s all in this book–just in time to get us through 2020 and see us into 2021, whatever that brings, and for years of continued wellness beyond.
Whether you drink it for the health benefits, illness prevention, or only for the flavor, there’s just no downside to making your own elderberry tea. It’s a money-saver and also a way to easily incorporate elderberry, enjoyably, into your health and diet plan every day.
Having your own set of elderberry tea recipes gives you variety but is also a very good way to be able to use elderberry even when the shortages are on for commercial products and syrups.
ORDER YOUR COPY HERE, today. Available in paperback and for Kindle and Kindle eReader Apps.
This is not the first year that I’ve dried vegetables to preserve them, but I certainly did more of it this year than any previous year. There are many benefits to dehydrating vegetables for preserving, and once you’re hooked you’ll wonder why you never did more of it before (I know I certainly do!).
One of the reasons that people don’t do more dehydrating is a very simple one—we don’t know what to do with those vegetables once we’ve got them dried. It’s a question that I see and am asked quite often. And so, along with learning more about the actual drying process, I’m always looking for ways to use dried produce. After all, if we don’t use it, then what’s the point?
Using Dried and Dehydrated Tomatoes
It’s a lot to take on how to use all types of dried vegetables in one article. It makes more sense to break it down into individual vegetables (and fruits, too). Actually—and you’ve probably heard this before—tomatoes, the subject for today, are fruit. But we know we really all consider them vegetables.
Tomato, tomaaato, fruit or veggie—what can you do with dried tomatoes?
You might not think so, but dried tomatoes are one of the easiest dried vegetables (fruit) to use. Dehydrated tomatoes reconstitute easily, which is key in maximizing their use. The easier it is to bring your dried produce “back to life,” the easier you’ll find it is for you to use them. It also helps that you don’t actually need to reconstitute tomatoes in order to use them (but just in case, there are instructions for that below).
That said, here are some of my favorite ways to use dried, dehydrated, and sun-dried tomatoes. Regardless of what method you used to dehydrate them, these uses will work for all properly preserved dry tomatoes:
Tip: consider any dried or dehydrated tomatoes just as good as “sun-dried,” and use them interchangeably in recipes.
“Sun-dried” Tomatoes in Oil. Very simply, use whole slices or break up into any size pieces (I find about ¼ to ½ inch something easy to chew after-the-fact). Place the tomatoes in a jar and then cover with olive oil. Add any herbs or spices you like. I love adding fresh or dried garlic cloves and some salt. I’ll frequently add in pepper (white or red pepper flakes are delicious) and basil.
This oil should be refrigerated for safety’s sake, which may cause the oil to coagulate, but if you leave the jar out at room temperature for a while before serving, or warm it a little, it will come right back to its fluid state. Prepare this oil several hours to days before you want to use it to get the best flavor infusion and some softening of the dried tomatoes (in this constitution they do not get as soft as cooked tomatoes so expect them to be a little crisp and chewy).
From here, there are many ways that you can use this infused oil, and/or the tomatoes. You may strain the tomatoes and vegetables from the oil or keep them in suspension, or you can remove just the tomatoes and use them. Some favorite ways to use the oil and/or the tomatoes are: as a dipping oil, salad dressing, on pizza, in stir-fries, as a marinade or tossed into pan-fried, sautéed, or roasted chops and meats.
This oil makes an excellent alternative to full-on pasta sauces—light, delicious, not overpowering, easy on the stomach, still with good tomato flavor…almost like a fast and easy sun-dried tomato pesto. It is an especially good pairing for veal and chicken but will do well with a number of meats, and of course with other vegetables!
Rehydrated for sauce. Tomatoes rehydrate very easily (see below), so rehydrating them and then pureeing or using for any sauce recipe is simple. Rehydrate, puree, season, simmer. Simple!
Dried tomato powder. Place dried tomatoes in a blender or food processor and process until pulverized into a powder. You can make the powder ahead to have on hand for everyday cooking.
Tomato powder works well as a thickener similar to tomato paste, as a seasoning for soups, stews, or roasted meats and vegetables, added to beef bone broth (really helps mellow the beef bones!), or added to vegetable juices.
In any soup, stew, or chili. Tomatoes rehydrate so easily that you don’t even need to rehydrate them before using them in these dishes. Just throw them in in a measure close to what the rehydrated to fresh equivalent would be (see below).
Rehydrated for salsa or Pico de Gallo. Rehydrate as per below, and use in place of fresh tomatoes in your favorite salsa recipe.In rice dishes. Easy. Add dried tomatoes in when boiling the rice, using a little extra water.
In omelets, casseroles, and other dishes. For these recipes, you can choose the form you think will work best—as a sun-dried type, in oil, rehydrated, or allowed to rehydrate in the cooking. Tomato is a great flavor for many of these types of dishes, and dried or dried and rehydrated tomatoes work excellently as well!
How to Rehydrate Dried Tomatoes for “Fresh” Tomato Recipes
To rehydrate dried tomatoes, place tomatoes in a bowl and add enough warm water to cover the dried tomatoes. Cover and let sit for one hour (or overnight in a refrigerator), and then use in cooking just as you would use canned or sliced/chopped tomatoes. If preferred, drain off excess water (though it can make a nice flavoring in soups and rice dishes, and if making sauce a little liquid to puree is not unwelcome).
The only real question left, then, is how do you know how much or how many dried tomatoes to use for the “fresh” yield you need? Here are some yields and equivalents to go by:
• 1 pound of fresh tomatoes will yield about 1 cup of dried tomatoes • Use 1 cup dried tomatoes for every pound of fresh tomatoes a recipe calls for—rehydrate according to use • 1 cup of rehydrated tomatoes equals 1 ½ cups
Recommended Reading for Drying Tomatoes, Using Dried Tomatoes, and Preserving Other Dried Foods
I strongly recommend this book for either drying fruits and vegetables or for resources and ways to use them after the fact. It is a very comprehensive guide, a “Bible” of sorts for preserving foods. It takes you all the way through from preserving to use, including a number of good recipes. Published by the reputable, reliable Storey Publishing house:
*This post may contain affiliate links. Affiliate links help customers shop ad help support the costs and maintenance of this website by proving a small percentage income of sales to the site owner/affiliate, which helps to make this website and information-sharing possible. Affiliate sales do not increase the cost of products to buyers who utilize the convenient links included in this article. Thank You for your support!