"Holunderblütensirup"

Healthy and tasty food from nature

You can quickly and easily make delicious syrup from elderflowers that has many good properties. Elderflowers have an expectorant, antibacterial, fever-reducing, strengthening, diaphoretic, blood-purifying and anti-inflammatory effect. You can take it as a tea or syrup for colds, fever, coughs and sore throats. The berries are also very healthy: they are rich in vitamin C and strengthen the immune system. They should not be eaten raw, so always process them and boil them.

You can pick elderflowers from April to June. The bushes often grow in parks, hedges, along roadsides and in settlements. But be careful that you really have elderberry in front of you and don't confuse it with other plants, such as the dwarf elderberry. You can recognize the real elderberry by its “unpaired leaves,” which consist of three to nine toothed lilac leaves. The white flowers grow in umbels, each of which has five petals.

I'll show you how you can easily make elderberry syrup yourself here: (Ingredients for about 3 liters of elderflower syrup)

•     4 liters of water
•     a lime
•     approx. 40-50 large elderflower umbels
•     800g sugar

Accesories:

•     2 large pots and lids or plates
•     fine sieve e.g. nut milk net
•     a funnel
•     clean, rinsed bottles

Preparation:

Pick around 40 – 50 elderberry umbels, if possible without kidnapping too many beetles and other insects. Flowers picked on dry days and around midday produce the most intense syrup. Place the umbels in two large pots and fill them with water enough to cover the flowers when you press them down (for me it was about 4 liters). Divide the juice of one organic lime into both pots. Cut the squeezed lime into small pieces and divide it into the pots. Wait a few minutes and then collect all the beetles and insects that made it into the pot and are now waiting on the surface to be rescued. ♥
Weight the flowers so that they are pressed under water, for example with a plate or pot lid. Let it steep for a day. Boil the elderberry water including flowers etc. with 400 g of sugar each. Let it simmer for five minutes and sieve it hot through a sieve or a nut milk cloth/net so that the flowers and limes remain in the cloth Pour syrup into clean, sterile bottles (e.g. old liqueur bottles). Close immediately with boiled, clean lids.

Voilá, your syrup is ready and will now last for at least a year. So you've bottled summer.

Wednesday, May 15, 2024