Canning Fireweed Jelly & Elderberry Syrup

[Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] we are out here harvesting some fire weed today we're going to be making a borage and fire weed jelly and we're also making elderberry syrup so we have to head to the back of the property to get some elderberries and into the garden to get forage [Music] we have plenty of borage to pick from a lot of them have already set their flowers and they're still going and I'm actually going after the leaves primarily I will be taking some of these flowers and flower buds but the leaves are what have a lot of the flavor [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so we are back in the kitchen and I'm going to get started with our fire weed and borage jelly as you may know fire weed grows pretty well throughout Alaska and we have only been trying it with teas but I am really excited to make it in a jelly I'm pretty sure that's like a classic recipe here so we decided that pairing it with forage which we have plentiful of in the garden would be kind of a cool switch up on that recipe so these are the fire weed flowers and they work their way up from the bottom all the way to the top and what I like to do is just break off the top for teas and I'm going to dry those out and then these are what we're after for our jelly we want to run our finger along that stem and then we're just going to be putting those blossoms aside another part of the plant that is good for tea is these leaves so I have been breaking these off near the top of the stem of the plants and then I just air dry them for cheese later in the winter so we have to do this whole bowl I'm gonna get this all taken apart including the borage and same thing we are going to be using leaves and blossoms from the borage so we have this process now and I think we have about 4 cups of the fire weed and 4 cups of the borage I'm going to put them in a pot and get this to a boil we're going to boil this down for maybe 5 or 10 minutes until we get a liquid that comes out of them and I already have 4 cups of water in there I'm going to add another 4 cups of water so equal ratio of flowers to water and we're gonna get these on the stove while the flowers are boiling I'm gonna go over some of the ingredients that you need for this recipe if you're interested in making it on your own first off as a disclaimer I haven't made this recipe before and this is the way we typically make jellies or jams so I just want you to know that ahead of time but I do think that it will work if you're interested in trying we started with a cups of flowers and leaves and then we combine that with 8 cups of water we're going to be straining that and taking the 8 cups of the liquid then we will be adding 1 lemon juice 6 cups sugar and one box of shower gel premium fruit pectin that we believe this is the less sugar one it does call for 12 cups of sugar with the recipe we're doing I never put the full amount and we usually still get a pretty good set so I'm only using 6 cups as I mentioned before so this is starting to come to a boil now probably gonna let that go for another 5 minutes I went ahead and turned the pot going that we head off and I'm gonna let this cool prior to straining it you can see that liquid in there has turned a different color so that is a good indication that everything has been steeped out of there I have a bowl set up here with a strainer and some muslin cloth we're gonna be pouring our liquid into there we just got finished straining this we had to wait a little while till it cooled still a little bit hot I'm gonna get this out of here I'm gonna put the lemons in now or lemon this was a very ripe one if I had to guesstimate I would say it's probably close to a quarter cup of liquid we're gonna get this back over to the saucepan actually kind of a nice color it looks like a dark wine or something per the instructions of the pectin we are using we are adding a quarter cup sugar now and then we're gonna be adding the prepackaged pectin and we're gonna go ahead and light the igniter and bring this to a boil and then we'll be adding the remaining sugar in so now that we've got this boiling I'm gonna add this sugar in and then we want this to come back up to a boil once that sugar is disolved for one minute exactly we are working on cutting down our consumption of sugar in fact we are trying to switch over our sugar to honey and that is why we have bees so that is gonna take a little while because the bees have to get established first before we can actually take honey from them but that's our goal is just to replace everything with honey that's what we've been working on the last few years it was a little bit easier and more affordable for us to source local honey in Oregon than it is here in Alaska our timers on we are at a full rolling boil right here at this point you'd want to already have your jars prepared which we do we have them over here on our table we went ahead and turn that off and we are going to bring it over here where our jars are already ready go ahead and get these labeled in oh it's a way pretty color it looks darker in the pot and it's quite a bit lighter and we need about a quarter-inch headspace so with this recipe we made close to nine half pint jars and Eric and I are always in the habit of wiping the rims with vinegar it just cleans off and he's sort of jelly or salt or sugar anything like that that could be a cause of failure when you're canning so you can't see it but that pectin has already started setting up and it is thick so I'm really excited about that and that just goes to show that you can use less sugar than those boxes call for [Music] there we go those are ready for our water bath er and we want one inch of water covering these before we get them to a boil so we're gonna let that water bath for 10 minutes all right so it is the next day we ended up taking a break last night because it got pretty late we're gonna pick back up with the elderberry syrup today this morning and the jelly turned out really good it's a nice color and it also is pretty set I think it may get a tiny bit thicker sometimes it takes a little while but it's pretty pretty thick I think and then we have a smaller batch and we made some English muffins so we're going to taste it and see how it turned out it's nice jelly texture so we went ahead and tried it and it is super delicious it actually tastes lemony with like a hint of fruity not typical of you know jams and jellies that you make out of fruits or berries but a little more flowery it's a really really nice light jelly I actually really like it and when we first strained and that liquid we were a little concerned because the borage made the liquid smell like artichokes so we didn't know quite how it was gonna turn out but it did it turned out wonderful and I'm very happy with it and we have eight jars not including this little half jar that we're gonna go through so I'm gonna get this cleaned up and we will get started on our elderberry syrup these are our elderberries Eric went ahead and clean these this morning he got them off the stems and we rinsed him and we just rinsed them just because but we are gonna be straining these so you don't feel retic li have to rinse them I'm going to get them in some water first to go ahead and boil down I think I have about 8 cups I measured it out and we're gonna be adding about the same amount of water so 8 cups of water to 8 cups of red alder berries so I'm adding in our water now we're from Oregon where there are blue elderberries that's what we are more familiar with red elderberries can be found here and with red elderberries there's a little more controversy about eating them they are safe cooked there's some indication that you shouldn't be eating stems leaves bark anything like that or even maybe even the berries raw so we are cooking them and we're going to be making a syrup and it's not going to be the traditional elderberry syrup that's for flus we're going to be turning it more into almost like a dessert syrup so we're just gonna be adding a teeny bit of sugar to it and then we will be canning it for this winter you can be used for pancake syrups we can put it in muffins things like that as this starts to heat up I'm going to get in here with our potato masher and break those berries down we're probably gonna let it go for at least 20 minutes I haven't done this before so I'm not quite sure how long I want to let it boil for all right so we finished up boiling our elderberries I think we let them go for about half an hour and I'm gonna strain them now and then I'll have to let this cool before I try to scoop out any of that remaining liquid so we went ahead and strained a little bit more out of the elderberries they're looking pretty messy right now and that's what liquid we were left with I'm gonna go ahead and put these put this back in our pot and I'm guessing that's a little under 8 cups of liquid I'm going to add just 1 cup of sugar and I'm gonna go ahead and bring this to a boil and what we want to do is let this reduce down until it gets a little bit thicker should probably take 10 or 15 minutes once we have it simmering once that's done we're gonna get it in the jars and water bath these for 10 minutes as well in half pint sized jars so this is the consistency that we ended up with it's a little bit thicker I'm gonna get it put in these jars here I think we'll make maybe or or five I'm not quite sure okay we're just gonna like those down vinegar and it only made four so it's not that much at all I'll have to harvest a lot more if we want more of these cans which i think is that we will because it actually was really really tasty I really liked it was pretty tart but it was nice and you know mildly sweet with the sugar we added and I'm just gonna put these in our pressure canner and get that boiling and then we will process those for ten minutes alright so these have been processed for that ten minutes and I'm going to take the rims off we always store our pans without the rims you usually want to wait 24 hours to check the seals but I'm pretty sure these sealed all the way so I'm not worried about it so if you have been following us you know that we are working hard to get this root cellar that we just felt filled up I don't know if we'll actually get it filled up all the way this year but that is the goal so I'm gonna get these over there Eric - this cool little tray which is helpful for me to walk them over and then he'll hand them down to me we're gonna be doing lots of videos on canning in the future feel free to leave a comment if there's something you specifically want to see that we're going to be using or making and we will try to include that in one of our videos

Channel: Simple Living Alaska

Views: 148,128

Keywords: off grid living, off grid life, living in alaska, off grid vlog, alaska vlog, homestead alaska, canning jelly how to, homemade jelly, alaska fireweed, harvesting fireweed, garden alaska, chickens alaska, cabin life, debt free living, tiny house alaska, life in alaska, home canning, presto pressure cooker, fireweed jelly recipe, fireweed plant, borage plant, elderberry alaska, elderberry syrup recipe, how to can jelly without a canner, pectin jelly recipe

Id: PnikAkmbX9M

Length: 17min 6sec (1026 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 31 2019