Homemade Medicine Made Simple: Immune-Boosting Elderberry Syrup {For the Pantry Shelf}

By foodiva

Ingredients

• 10 cups prepared elderberry juice
• 4 cups evaporated cane juice (You can buy it here.)
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon cloves
• 1/4 cup evaporated cane juice
• 1/3 cup pectin (2/3 cup if you’re making jelly)
• For use with Pomona’s Pectin- 3 teaspoons EACH of calcium water & pectin (You can buy it here. Or Azure Standard has good prices.)

Details

Servings 1
Adapted from reformationacres.com

Preparation

Step 1

It makes sense to me that a good place to start was with an immune-booster like elderberry syrup. I mean, if you don’t get sick in the first place, you don’t need all the rest, do you?

Another way to prepare it would be to add in some pectin and make a jelly. So long as I have little ones who will be taking it, I’m going to prepare mine this way so that it sticks better to the spoon when I’m administering it to them. Or to the

•Perhaps you’ve heard of the benefits that raw honey as a sweetener has on the immune system? Really it would make a lovely pairing to make a syrup, but since I’m canning this and heating it to a certain temperature to make it shelf stable, then adding raw honey would be just as good as me pulling a handful of cash out of my pocket and lighting it on fire. Heating it so high will destroy all of the constituents in the honey that make it raw. So I’ll save my raw honey for making a delicious cough syrup instead.

•Because I’d like to make the most of my yield of elderberries, I’d rather thicken it up to a syrup consistency rather than boil it down to one. Here’s where things get a bit confusing. Stay with me here. No, wait, hold on I’ll go make a chart. Be right back….

In the past, I’ve used 1/3 cup of Dutch Pectin. That’s as much as I’d use to make a batch of jelly. Since this is double the liquid than a typical jelly recipe, I’m technically using half the pectin to thicken up to a syrup.

When you go to prepare the syrup, first remove as many of the stems from frozen berries as you can. Place the berries in a stockpot and cover them with water.

Bring the water to a boil, then reduce it to a simmer for 45 minutes.

Mix the 1/4 cup of the evaporated cane juice & the powdered pectin amount of choice in a bowl.

Bring the elderberry juice, 4 cups of evaporated cane juice, the spices (and the calcium water IF using Pomona’s only) to a full, rolling boil. Hold it there for a minute.

Add in the cane juice/pectin mix.

Return to full, rolling, boil & boil for 1 minute.

I have a bunch of elderberries in the freezer too, and have wanted to make syrup. I just hadn’t seen instruction for canning it. Your recipe and instructions are perfect!