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blackberrying on saturday we found a load of elderberry bushes, so we thought we'd grab a few bag-fulls during the week, but I've never cooked elderberries before so I'm not quite sure what I should do with them.

looking around it seems you can do most stuff with them you'd do with any other berry and that they freeze OK - but a lot of recipes I've found seem to include vinegar - any idea why? Whats strange about elderberries I need to know about before I start randomly cooking with them?

we picked loads yesterday, I now have 2 batchs of Wine on the go and 1 batch of jam.

Oh and loads in the freezer

You can do most anything with elderberries that you'd do with blackberries or grapes. (I'm sure I red somewhere that they are chemically very close to grapes).

There's no reason at all why you can't make sweet elderberry dishes - I often use them in crumbles and suchlike, usually with apple cos the flavours work really well together. They are gorgeous in summer pudding with other berries too, and if you drop them in a bottle of gin or vodka and leave for a while (like making sloe gin) the results are divine!

I think the vinegar recipes are because elderberries are usually quite a sharp taste and modern tastes tend to prefer that sort of flavour as a savoury thing. They do give a lovely sweet and sour taste in vinegary recipes and you can't go wrong with elderberry chutneys and ketchup.

Carol

Thanks for starting this thread, den the cat, I was wondering the same thing myself! Is it my immagination or are there more elderberries than usual this year?

I have posted quite a few elderberry recipes on the NEEPS forum (northeast environmentally friendly peoples site) but yes, there does seem to be more elderberries this year- usually they are eaten very quickly by birds and I think this could be a worrying sign that there are fewer birds in our hedgerows generally.
Shame

elderberries freeze fine and I have made good jams, crumbles, pies and wine with them. My chickens love them too they are also very effective against cold/flu etc. They also have a laxative effect if many are eaten raw and teh berries contain good amounts of vitamins A, B and C. They can also be used to make hair dye. I believe the bark and leaves have further medicinal properties as well

dmwcarol, elderberries are also called poor mans grapes

The reason for the masses of elderberries is that this year has had a glut of fruit from lots of different fruit bearing plants and trees. This means that what would be normally a stop gap in the fruiting period has become just another berry in the masses that are available.

Trees usually have a glut year every 3 - 5 years, not so sure about plants and such but it's been wetter and strangely sunnier than the average year. Ideal growing and fruiting conditions? Based on the number of birds and other miscellaneaous creatures the cats have brought in and the abundance of feathery beasties i don't think they are having much trouble, Should be lots of insect eaters to combat the plague we are bound to get of garden pests etc that we are sure to get due to the impending easy winter the weather men say is to be expected.

Chris and Helen

Ahhh an easy winter... so the masses of berries don't mean a hard winter ahead... am sure I heard that as an old wives tale somewhere.

We've had heaps of them up here - in fact we picked them with p999j and some other Neeps! I've got a load in the freezer and we made elderberry cordial too...

Poor man's grapes... I can believe that.. they smell very vineous. YUM