We are home to three types of elderberry, two of which - the black and the red elderberry - can also be used in the kitchen. However, you should not eat the berries raw because they contain the toxic glycoside sambunigrin. However, this can be removed by cooking, so you can fully enjoy the taste and he alth benefits of elderberries.
Is red elderberry edible?
Red elderberry is edible, but the berries should not be eaten raw as they contain the toxic glycoside sambunigrin. Cooking and juicing removes the toxins and makes the pulp edible, while the seeds remain.
Remove seeds before processing
The unripe berries of both black and red elderberries are poisonous, but there is a big difference: the toxic ingredients in the black elderberries dissolve completely when cooked, but not in the red ones. The seeds still contain toxins while the pulp is edible. For this reason, you need to remove the seeds from the red elderberry, which is best done by juicing. There are two ways to do this:
- Juicing with a (steam) juicer
- Juicing like in great-grandmother's time
How to juice red elderberry without a juicer
If you don't have a juicer, you can get the coveted red elderberry juice as follows:
- Pour about a hand's breadth of water into a wide pot.
- The picked (only use ripe fruits!) and washed berries go here.
- You can also add a little sugar, but this is not necessary.
- Cook the berries until they burst.
- You can also use a fork.
- Hang a fine cloth or sieve over a bowl or similar.
- and let the elderberry juice drip in there overnight.
- The poisonous seeds remain in the cloth.
Mix red elderberry with other fruit
However, the taste of red elderberry is not for everyone. Berries and juice - and therefore also jellies made from them - taste very tart, similar to cranberries. However, you can tone down the flavor by adding equal parts of red currant juice, raspberry juice or apple juice to make jelly. Red elderberry jelly tastes very good on bread, but also with meat and cheese dishes.
Basic recipe for red elderberry jelly
To make Red Elderberry Jelly you will need:
1 liter of juice (either pure or mixed with other juices)
1 kilogram of sugarthe juice of two lemons
It makes sense to add lemon juice as it improves gelling ability. Elderberry generally has a very difficult time gelling. Boil the juice and sugar until the sugar has dissolved and the hot juice gels on the spoon. Now fill the still hot jelly into jars with screw lids, close them tightly and first turn them upside down.
Tip
The jelly also tastes very good with 1 liter of elderberry juice and 300 milliliters of dry red wine as well as some vanilla, cinnamon and cloves.
