Chokecherries

[guywhofishes]

For those of you that love chokecherry syrups etc. the picking can't get much better than what I have seen this year when I was south of Valley City in the Sheyenne River valley. Wow. You can see more fruit than leaves on many trees. They are just getting black - maybe 20% are ripe - so by this weekend it should be prime time,

For many of you this news is no big deal but for those that live in the red river valley the pickings can be really slim most years due to wind/storms, birds, etc.

We're restocking our syrup supply as we speak. One of my favorite applications for cc syrup (beyond pancakes of course) is to pour it on plain unflavored yogurt and granola.

My grandma would be proud of us for practicing our heritage. I will never forget that smell of the house when she was making syrup. Outstanding! It's now part of my DNA.



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Plus they are really easy to harvest - just crack a cold one and have a seat in a lawn chair in your local river bottom and they will march right into your bucket while you relax.

So easy that it's no wonder our ancestors developed a taste for them.

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it's good on ice cream too

anybody else have good applications for cc syrup?

 

[Duckslayer100]

I've never heard of chokecherry syrup. I was told as a wee lad that chokecherries would make you sick.

Huh...

 

[guywhofishes]

I've never heard of chokecherry syrup. I was told as a wee lad that chokecherries would make you sick.

Huh...

 

[Kentucky Windage]

Should I just give you my address so you can ship them to me or would you rather hand deliver them?

 

[guywhofishes]

seriously duck?....

 

[svnmag]

This is outfreakingstanding!

 

[ItemB]

What's your recipe or process of making the chokecherry syrup? Or is that highly regarded and only available for a fee?

 

[fullrut]

Pan fried corn bread. Cooking oil or bacon grease in a cast iron pan, heat till hot, drop in thick slice of corn bread, flip once and plate. Drizzle on syrup. Guaranteed to block your arteries and loosen your stool at the same time.

 

[Lycanthrope]

use a steamer to extract the juice?

 

[svnmag]

That's food of the gods Fullrut.

 

[guywhofishes]

What's your recipe or process of making the chokecherry syrup? Or is that highly regarded and only available for a fee?

our process involves a stainless steam extraction vs. grandma and her friends using old panty hose and other torture contraptions.

galwhofishes makes the syrup once we have the precious "liquor" extracted

I don't know her specifics but it involves some reduction/concentration via boiling - then addition of sugar, lemon juice, and karo syrup - and just a touch of almond extract - about 1/3 of what most recipes suggest for just a hint of nuttiness

I'll have her post recipe later but I'm pretty sure it's nothing exotic and it's same as 90% of what a guy would find with google

grandma never wrote anything down since she cooked the same things every year for probably 89 of her 99 years

black gold baby



p.s. if you really go gonzo and harvest many quarts of extract you have the option of just canning the extract - decide on making it into syrup or jelly later on depending on which you're running out of sooner

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use a steamer to extract the juice?

yep, the steamer makes them boil from the inside - when you open the lid and peek in it's like a freaking horror movie - they are all boiling away and their juices are spewing out - eeeeekk

so they all boil from within - forcing all the cells to rupture - the juices drip out of the fruit pan down into the collector. After a few rotations of fruit your collector is full and you simply flow the extract into the bowls/jars for later conversion to syrup/jelly

the puffy remains of the berries look super juicy and a guy thinks "OMG - what a waste - we didn't get all the juice out!" so you put a bunch in an old panty hose and squeeze like nuts and you get maybe a teaspoon of bitter extract out of it. that's the last time you wonder if it's "efficient"

pile some rhubarb into that baby - juice it - then open up the fruit lid and you have a paper thin layer of rhubarb laying there - it's insanely easy and works like magic IMO

I insisted on a stainless model - aluminum with acidic food is bad idea IMO.

here's a crummy video of using one



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[bowcarp]

I've never heard of chokecherry syrup. I was told as a wee lad that chokecherries would make you sick.

Huh...

your childhood was to sheltered LOL , chokecherry syrup is the food of the gods , eaten myself sick on juneberry's never chokecherrys plus you get a awesome pit to send a friends way ;:;rofl my Dad could make a chokecherry wine crisp and light knock your socks off if you weren't careful add that to the list of things I wish I would of learned from him

 

[Kurtr]

I want to plant about 100 yards of choke cherries bushes on the north side of my house for this reason

 

[johnr]

I have decided that the time and expense of this choke cherry ordeal would be better spent on whores and whiskey...jk

mrs johnr and myself enjoy producing our own spicy salsa, and it sure isn't saving us any salsa cash.

 

[DarkWhiskey]

I plan on trying to make some choke cherry wine this year. Does anyone have a recipe?

 

[Allen]

Yep. It's a banner year out here by Bismarck as well.

Ma is going to be happy happy happy.

 

[LBrandt]

Chokecherry wine you were a friend of mine, I got drunk on you more than one time. Cousins and me would sneak a bottle or two out of my folks larder when we were 13 or 14, didn't take much back then. Paid hell when we got caught. You know you always get caught but some times its worth it.:;:cheers

 

[Up Y'oars]

Syrup goes well when on pancakes. We also swirled in some of this syrup with fresh farm sweet cream and dip in a slice of bread as a special delicacy when Farmer Joe delivered his goods to town (farm fresh eggs, too).

 

[tikkalover]

I remember going, and picking chokecherries, and Juneberries with my parents. I think the bushes/trees were tick magnets!

 

[Fisherman25]

My favorite is to put it on vanilla ice cream. Yummmmmy