Smooth elderberry jam

Name: Smooth elderberry jam
Ingredients: 4 kg ripe elderberries; 2 kg sugar; 2 sachets vanilla sugar; juice of 2 lemons

Jam - Smooth elderberry jam by stefana D. - Recipia

The green berries float to the surface in cold water, so you can pick them out without searching for them one by one. Smooth elderberry jam is simmered with sugar and lemon, then strained until silky, with a consistency close to rosehip paste. I keep only the ripe, black berries. Preparation: 6 hours. Cooking: 3 hours. Resting: 8 hours. Total time: 17 hours. Servings: 300. About 36 kcal and 0.1 g protein per serving.

Ingredients

4 kg ripe elderberries
2 kg sugar
2 sachets vanilla sugar
juice of 2 lemons

Preparation

1. Pick only the ripe, black berries off the clusters. Wash them in 2-3 changes of water; if you put them in a bowl of cold water, the green, unripe berries float to the surface. Sorting takes about 5 hours. 2. Add the sugar to the berries and stir. Cover the bowl and leave it in the fridge overnight, about 8 hours, until the fruit releases its juice. 3. Add the vanilla sugar and the juice of the two lemons. Simmer over low heat for 2 hours, stirring now and then, until the berries soften and the syrup bubbles gently. 4. Pass the jam through a sieve, then through a tomato mill. The mill can clog because of the large, hard seeds; passing it through takes about an hour. 5. Put the pulp back on the heat and cook for another hour, until the jam thickens. 6. Pour the jam into sterilized jars and seal them. Cover the jars with blankets and leave them until the next day.

Notes

You can replace the vanilla sugar with 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. After opening, I keep the jar in the fridge and eat the jam within 3 days. A thin layer works well on toast. In our family, my dad and Alex picked the clusters, while my husband and I picked off the berries. Clusters with small berries make sorting take longer; I put 1-2 tablespoons of jam into the tomato mill at a time, because the hard seeds can clog it.