A few years ago I transplanted some from my front yard to my backyard and began cultivating it for consumption. This year I’m getting a great crop. Yesterday and today I picked a couple bowlfuls and ate some fresh, while freezing most of it for future use. The Wikipedia article has a picture of it in a Greek salad. I’ll have to give it a try in my favorite summer salad: tomatoes, cucumbers and feta cheese.

I encourage you to check your yard for it and give it a try. Growing food doesn’t have to be hard, but can be as simple as pulling a few weeds.

In a large enough glass jar that will hold them combine:

• 2 cups of berries (Break up the berries just slightly – don’t want to mash them completely or puree them or anything…)
• 1 750 ml.  bottle of 100 proof vodka

Let soak somewhere dark and cool about 2 weeks.

The day before you’re ready to try mixing a batch of liqueur, make up a small batch of simple syrup:

• Bring 2 cups of water to a boil
• Mix in 2 cups of sugar – stir to dissolve the sugar completely as quickly as possible (about 1 minute), and pull off the heat immediately.
• Let cool completely and store in the refrigerator (will keep for several weeks).

On the day you’re ready, try making some sample batches first:

• Pull aside a small sample (e.g. 1 cup) of the berry-infused rum you have had soaking as a sample batch.
• Filter the berries out (use cheese cloth for best results, or a coffee filter or, in a pinch, a paper towel).
• Now it’s time to experiment!  Take a taste of your sample of berry-infused rum (berries filtered out).  It will be very hot (i.e. strong alcohol) from the overproof rum at this point – you are just trying to see if you like the amount of berry flavor coming through.  Take a portion of your berry-infused rum sample, and add a small amount of simple syrup.  The simple syrup will cut the alcohol content down as well as, obviously, sweeten the liqueur.  Continue to add simple syrup to taste.  Play around with proportions of the berry-infused rum and simple syrup to see what you like, and make a note of proportions.
• If after playing around a bit you’re not satisfied with the amonut of berry flavor of your liqueur, you may wish to let the remainder of the berry mixture soak a few more days and take another sample and play around again until you have the balance you like.

Once you find a balance that is right for you, proceed to filter and add simple syrup in your proportions to the remainder of the berry infused rum. Bottle it!
Refrigeration will help lengthen the shelf life of the bottled liqueur, but after 6 months it will start tasting kind of dead, so use it sooner rather than later.

Nice in a small cordial glass after dinner or poured over vanilla ice cream.

Here are his instructions:

Alright, I consulted the family mixologist, and here were his suggestions for making your black raspberry liqueur.  Unfortunately, as with many things he does, he does it all by taste, so there isn’t an exact recipe per se, but:

 

In a large enough glass jar that will hold them combine:

2 cups of berries (Break up the berries just slightly - don’t want to mash them completely or puree them or anything…)

1 bottle of Wray and Nephew overproof rum

Let soak somewhere dark and cool about 2 weeks.

The day before you’re ready to try mixing a batch of liqueur, make up a small batch of simple syrup:

 

Bring 2 cups of water to a boil

Mix in 4 cups of sugar – stir to dissolve the sugar completely as quickly as possible (about 1 minute), and pull off the heat immediately.

Let cool completely and store in the refrigerator (will keep for several weeks).

 

 

 

On the day you’re ready, try making some sample batches first:

 

Pull aside a small sample (e.g. 1 cup) of the berry-infused rum you have had soaking as a sample batch.

Filter the berries out (use cheese cloth for best results, or a coffee filter or, in a pinch, a paper towel).

 

Now it’s time to experiment!  Take a taste of your sample of berry-infused rum (berries filtered out).  It will be very hot (i.e. strong alcohol) from the overproof rum at this point – you are just trying to see if you like the amount of berry flavor coming through.  Take a portion of your berry-infused rum sample, and add a small amount of simple syrup.  The simple syrup will cut the alcohol content down as well as, obviously, sweeten the liqueur.  Continue to add simple syrup to taste.  Play around with proportions of the berry-infused rum and simple syrup to see what you like, and make a note of proportions.

 

If after playing around a bit you’re not satisfied with the amonut of berry flavor of your liqueur, you may wish to let the remainder of the berry mixture soak a few more days and take another sample and play around again until you have the balance you like.

 

Once you find a balance that is right for you, proceed to filter and add simple syrup in your proportions to the remainder of the berry infused rum. Bottle it!

Refrigeration will help lengthen the shelf life of the bottled liqueur, but after 6 months it will start tasting kind of dead, so use it sooner rather than later.

Nice in a small cordial glass after dinner or poured over vanilla ice cream.

The liqueur is beautiful to behold, with a rich red color. It’s yummy, too, although we all (Rebecca, Martin and I) agree that the rum overpowers the berry flavor. Recommendation: Try vodka with the next batch. Looks like I’ll have to run more experiments!

My recipe follows. It was based on a recipe in Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions. Of course, I altered the ingredients somewhat, adjusting to what I had available and to what I thought would taste good. I encourage you to be flexible and experiment, too. Fermentation is as much art as science. Below the recipe are some comments on what I did and how long it took for a nice flavor to develop.

Bob’s Fruit & Nut Chutney

3 chopped Fuji apples

2 lemons (juice and grated peel)

2 tsp. kosher salt

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup raw walnuts

1/4 cup whey (strained from yogurt)

1/2 tsp. thyme

1 tsp. fennel

I used a half-gallon glass jar, with a lid modified to hold a standard beer-brewing airlock/bubbler. I simply mixed the ingredients in a bowl, put into the jar and mashed them down to try to cover everything with liquid. The above recipe filled the jar a little more than half full. There was a little fruit left uncovered, so I added extra water. I was in a hurry, so wasn’t thinking carefully about adding the water. As a result, I added a full cup of extra water, when I only needed about 1/3 cup extra. This probably diluted the whey and salt enough to slow the fermentation process somewhat. Despite this mistake, it worked. I think lactofermentation is a pretty forgiving process.

I wasn’t able to see any noticeable fermentation taking place. That is, there was no obvious bubbling in the airlock. So, it was a slow process. After four days, it was reasonably edible, although at that point the salty flavor was stronger than I would have liked. I put it in the refrigerator to slow the process. Ten days later, the flavors had mellowed, with the salty flavor diminishing and the sour taste increasing. In the future, I think I should let it go two to four days longer before refrigeration.

When I’ve finished eating and sharing this batch (about three gallons) I’ll make another batch and start experimenting with other recipes that have more than just cabbage on the ingredient list.

It was fun. Her approach is traditional, that is, she doesn’t measure how much salt she puts into the mix, she simply tastes it to see if it tastes about right. I like that approach, but had no experience to guide me. Now I do. Since I’m a numbers guy, I did measure roughly what we used. The 2.5 to 3 pound heads of cabbage were salted with about 2 tablespoons of salt each, more than I used last year. The carrots she used in her ‘kraut provide extra sugar for the lactobacillus bacteria that make the ‘kraut, so her batch should be ready slightly sooner.

She is also traditional in that we simply put the vegetables into a wide-mouth half-gallon jar and she will weight them down under a coaster and let the brine spill over into a pan. By filling the container to the top and making sure the vegetables are covered with brine, the “scum” (or “bloom” as fermentation expert Sandor Katz calls it–see Resource 1, below) simply spills out and over the top as the vegetables ferment. This is because lacto-fermentation produces water as a by-product. Her approach is a variation on the method illustrated in Resource 1.

My crock is designed differently, with a lid that fits into a water-filled trough. Carbon dioxide is also produced as a by-product of lacto-fermentation. This bubbles up out of the brine, creating pressure that lifts the lid, causing the air in the crock to bubble out. The CO₂ produced dilutes the air, reducing oxygen so that very little scum is produced in the crock. In both methods, the vegetables are weighted down to keep them under water, so they can ferment away happily in the anerobic environment necessary for fermentation. But, I digress. Right now, all I care about is that my cabbage is fermenting away, evidenced by my gurgling crock.

Besides the salt taste test, there are two other things I learned from Tamara that should make my ‘kraut better than last year’s first attempt:

1. When mixing salt and cabbage in a bowl, squeeze it to force out cabbage juice. The salt will dissolve in the juice and speed up the osmotic process of pulling water out of the cabbage cells to create the brine. Doing this resulted in a surprising amount of brine, enough to cover the packed down cabbage from the start, requiring no additional water.
2. Let it ferment for just a few days before checking it or slowing down the process. She will refrigerate her batch after only two days. Sandor Katz recommends starting to sample the product after just a few days. Last year I didn’t do this, and kept the crock going for a couple of weeks before refrigerating the sauerkraut. Katz’ comments (Reference 1, below) are that letting it go too long makes the texture soft and gives a poorer flavor. Both these characteristics suggest that letting it ferment too long was one of my mistakes last year.

I’ll let you know how it turns out in a few days.

A final word on how healthy homemade sauerkraut is. Our digestive system is the natural home for many species of bacteria that help us digest our food. One type of bacteria is Lactobacillus, a genus of bacteria that produce lactic acid as part of the fermentation process. These bacteria are what produce yogurt and sauerkraut, among other things, and the lactic acid produced is what gives them their sour flavors. Commercial varieties of sauerkraut from our industrial agriculture system are usually cooked to kill off the bacteria to stop the fermentation process. Thus, all the bacteria that you would eat and which would aid your digestive processes are killed off. While this may help the product’s shelf life, it doesn’t help you. When you eat live-culture sauerkraut (like you make at home), you get all the living bacteria that go with it, which improves the natural flora of your digestive system, aiding digestion.

Resources:

1. Sandor Katz’ Wild Fermentation book excerpt on making simple sauerkraut.
2. University of Wisconsisn Cooperative Extension’s Make Your Own Sauerkraut guide.