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So chokecherries, and cherries in general show up in so many recommended sample food lists across this site, that I decided to show you how I go about making chokecherry juice concentrate. Being as you need to denature the hydrocyanide either by sun-drying or by cooking for a minimum of 5 minutes, making a juice concentrate is a natural choice for a wide range of uses around the kitchen. Due to downsizing into an RV tinyhome living arrangement a few years ago, and not wanting to fill the house with steam, I switched from cooking 3 soup pots on the stove to using a crockpot. My usual crockpot can hold roughly 2 grocery bags’ worth of chokecherries.
Last year, we were given a very large GE crockpot alongside some bison bones to make broth with, and the gifter didn’t want the crockpot back. I figured I’d be able to use it this year for processing chokecherries and that ideally it would make such processing faster and more efficient. Being able to control the temperature like you would an oven was a plus, and the berries cooked in a decent length of time.
I grabbed my meat mallet, as it’s surface features work better to crush the berries than a potatoe masher does, and I set about crushing. Thrusting the mallet down into the berry mass, then rocking it back and forth on the bottom of the pot, and repeating all over the pot over and over and over until I began to see more mashed berries than whole, and the water was now a dark, opaque magenta. This batch was a blend of black chokecherries and some Pin or red chokecherries, but more black than Pin. If the pot is all black, the colour is a dark translucent purple. If its all Pin, the colour is a bright, lurid, opaque magenta! This was mostly black with some Pin, so the colour was a dark, mostly opaque magenta.
When I was happy with the crushing, it was time to set up my bowl and cheesecloth. I use an old metal dog bowl holder upside down to hold my cheesecloth that I made from old curtain sheers. I took two squares and tied them together at all four corners. I have several sets tied like this and I throw them into the wash as is and they clean up great. So I grabbed one set and attached it to the nobs of the metal frame. My squares are larger than the frame so I twist the knots before slipping them over the nobs to create a high-walled net that I then fill with the crushed berries.
Today I learned that my net can’t hold the contents of such a large crockpot, not even by half! I ended up running for a second large bowl, grabbing my metal colander, and ladling crushed berries into that. I still had to pack down both straining efforts to even try to empty the crockpot. My daughter came out to help, had me empty part of the net’s contents, and pressed out the juice so I could refill it with the remaining berries in the crockpot, then we went to the barn and let the berries strain on their own, covering them with more cheesecloth to keep the bugs out.
NOTE TO SELF: Just because you can use the larger crockpot to cook the berries, doesn’t mean you are set up to strain that big a batch when they’re done!!! Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should! My daughter and I have decided all future batches will be done in the smaller household crockpot! Lesson learned!
Once the straining was done, I poured the second bowl into the first and largest of my mixing bowls, and it was nearly full! I filled 5 one litre jars, a classico sauce jar, and a small pint mason jar from this batch of berries. I have four more bags of chokecherry to separate from their twigs, which means roughly two more batches using the crockpot I know I can handle the straining for.
Edit Aug 15th, by the time I wrapped up the entire task this week, I’d made over 16 jars of juice concentrate, and turned 3 of the jars into chokecherry syrup!
end edit
So how do you do create your chokecherry juice concentrate?
CHOKECHERRY JUICE CONCENTRATE
Ingredients:
Chokecherry berries
Water, enough to cover the berries
Tools:
Pot large enough to hold the berries you expect to fill it with, or multiple pots, one for each element if you have a large haul. Alternatively, you can use a crockpot.
Slotted spoon, for stirring the berries occasionally while cooking.
Ladle, for ladling out the crushed berries into your cheesecloth, and for filling your jars.
Potatoe masher or meat mallet, for crushing the berries in the pot after they have boiled.
Large mixing bowl
Apparatus to suspend your cheesecloth over the bowl
Cheesecloth, preferably a firm weave, as these berries are heavy, perhaps a square out of an old curtain sheer for example.
Jars, to hold the juice concentrate after it’s been boiled.
Instructions:
Separate the berries from their twigs and place in the pot. Set the twigs with their leaves off to one side as you can dry these. Ashley likes to add the twigs to teas, although I prefer whittled chokecherry bark to get more of the cambrium layer myself. The leaves make a nice base to create your own wild tea flavours with, and sometimes add a fruity flavour to your blend. So set these out to dry, then crush them into a tin and label.
When your pot is full of berries, up to an inch away from the rim of the pot, or however high your haul is if less than that, add your water. You only want to add enough water to just cover the berries.
Set the pot on the stove and bring to a boil. Allow to boil for no less than 5 minutes. Ideally, you want to start seeing the berries splitting. This is your que to turn off the heat and start crushing. If you are using a crockpot, set the crockpot to high and allow to cook the berries for roughly 2 hours or so, again, when the berries begin to split, that is your que to turn off the heat and start crushing.
Crush the berries until there is more crushed than whole in the pot.
Get out your mixing bowl, set up your apparatus to hang the cheesecloth in such a way that you can fill it over the bowl and then let it drain. Once your setup is secure, ladle out the crushed berries into your cheesecloth, then let it drain for awhile on it’s own, at least until the temperature has cooled down to where you can handle it with your bare hands. Then remove the cheesecloth from it’s hanging position, and twist to squeeze out as much as you can of any remaining juice in the berries.
Ladle the juice into jars, put the lids on tight, and label as follows:Â Chokecherry Juice Concentrate, today’s year.
If you used canning jars, you can now either follow your favourite canning instructions to make the jars shelf-stable, or you can place your jars in the freezer. They will keep in the freezer indefinitely. I have yet to open a jar that was bad from the freezer. Sometimes if they are 2yrs old, they will age quicker in the fridge, but otherwise, they remain viable for awhile. Ensuring you wrote the year down on the label will help you in knowing how quickly you may have to use a jar once it’s thawed.
Because we reuse our jars for so many different things, our labels are made of masking tape and permanent marker! It doesn’t pay for us to be fancy with our jar labels in this house because of our reuse policy.
USING YOUR JUICE CONCENTRATE:
You can use your juice concentrate a myriad of ways. For us, we like to make chokecherry lemonade. Pour enough chokecherry juice concentrate to be roughly a centimeter deep in your glass. Add the same amount of lemon juice concentrate. Add your preferred natural sweetener. Top up your glass with water and stir.
We also like to add the juice concentrate to smoothies, and even add it to cocoa. However, due to chokecherry having very similar nutritional components to cocoa, doing so makes for a very rich flavoured drink!
One way many people enjoy the juice concentrate, is as a syrup.
To make a simple shelf-stable syrup without canning, do the following:
CHOKECHERRY SYRUP:
Measure out a jar’s worth of syrup into a large pot.
Take that measurement and double it for the amount of sugar you are now going to add. Doubling the sugar is step number one in making a non-canned shelf-stable syrup.
Turn on the heat and begin stirring as you bring it to a boil. Once at a boil, se the timer for 2 minutes and continue stirring vigorously to prevent overflow. If you are able, you can manage the height of the boil with your element’s temperature dial while you stir, just keep it boiling for the full 2 minutes.
After the timer dings, turn off the heat, grab your syrup jars and run them under hot water to warm them up so they don’t shatter. Run the seals and rings under hot water as well. If your hot water tank isn’t hot enough, you can have these on a low boil in another pot of water on the stove. This both sterilizes them as well as ensures they won’t shatter when you ladle the hot syrup into them.
After filling the jars to just under the lip, tighten on the rings and turn upside down to cool. (edit Aug 15, 2024), in the picture to the left here, those are upside down pint jars. 11 of them between the syrup bottles) This creates a vacuum that bacteria are unable to live in. So if you didn’t kill them by heating the jars, and if you didn’t kill them by giving them far too much of a good thing (the doubled sugar amount), you will kill them anaerobically as the jars cool.
Making this syrup from the juice concentrate makes for a very nice flavoured syrup that you can use on pancakes, over icecream and other desserts, or to reduce a step in making your chokecherry lemonade above, as the juice and the sweetener are already combined, just at lemon and water.
