What are barberries? These are graceful oblong berries of red color with thin thorns. Lush bushes of barberry grow on forest glades and edges, on the slopes of beams and ravines, sometimes as an ornamental plant on city streets. The entire shrub is suitable for medicinal use, berries - in cooking and medicine. Today we will figure out how to use barberry. Recipes will be presented to your attention. And let's talk about useful properties another time.
Barberry Drying
Berries are harvested in late autumn, when they are fully ripe and gain maximum vitamins. Berries have good antiseptic properties, so they can be stored for a long time even without any processing. Put them, for example, in a regular container, vacuum, and put in the refrigerator. You don’t have to worry about their safety for a month, if you need to save more time - send it to the freezer, where you can keep it for a whole year. But we will do it easier, we will dry the barberry. There are various recipes for drying, we will consider the simplest and most universal. At the first stage, this is done at 40-45 degrees in order to prevent the loss of vitamins as much as possible.
Then the berries are already dried at a temperature of 60 degrees. In the oven, this is done as follows. The fruits are lightly washed, then dried in the air. After that, put on a baking sheet in one layer and put in the oven. For some time, determined experimentally, dried at 45 degrees, then set to 60 degrees. When do you need to complete the process? If the berries do not stick together when squeezed in a fist, then the barberry is ready. Fill in plastic bottles and store for several years.
How else can barberry be stored?
Suppose we collected barberries in the fall. The recipes below will help you save it in several more ways. We collect the berries, sort, wash, boil in a small amount of water and squeeze the juice. We pour it into half-liter bottles, sterilize and use instead of vinegar in the preparation of jelly and sauces. Cooking candied barberry. We collect with twigs, boil the syrup from a glass of water and two glasses of sugar. Then we take a sprig of barberry with fruits, dip in syrup, roll in sugar sand and place on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper.
Dry at a low temperature. Then we store in banks, covering them with paper covers. Berries can also be pickled. We collect, as in the previous case, with branches. We prepare a brine from three glasses of water and a quarter glass of salt. We put the fruits in jars and pour the brine, previously cooled. We tie the cans; when mold appears, we replace the old pickle with a new one. Such berries are well suited to meat dishes. How do you like barberry? Cooking recipes for the winter? These were the easiest ways. Now we will describe a little more complicated.
Barberry: jam recipes
We offer two options. For the first one kilogram of berries and one and a half to two kilograms of granulated sugar are needed . Use preferably intensely colored, well-ripened berries. They are washed and thrown into a colander. We cook 70% syrup from 500-600 ml of water and one and a half to two kilograms of sugar. Dip the berries in boiling syrup, bring to a boil, remove from heat and leave for 10-12 hours.
Then boil the jam until cooked on low heat, put it in sterile jars and roll it up. For the second option, you need half a kilogram of granulated sugar and mashed barberry. We wash part of the fruits, chop the part. Bring the mashed potatoes to a boil and add, continuously stirring, sugar. Cook further until it thickens. Then we throw the laid berries into the pan, cook for a few more minutes and put them hot over the banks. Then roll up the lids and turn upside down.
Cooking jam and barberry jelly
What else can you use barberry for? The recipes are numerous, for example, from it you can make jelly and jam. How? For jam we need about one and a half kilograms of sugar and 1.2 kilograms of barberry fruits. Cook them until soft, then wipe them through a sieve, add sugar and cook on low heat. After the mass decreases by a third, remove the pan from the fire and spread the jam on the banks.
Jelly is prepared in almost the same way, except that we add a little decoction to the mass, so that it is a little thinner. And we use sugar a little less. In both cases, the cans with the finished product are stored in a cool dark place. If you encounter problems, preparing barberry, recipes, photos of the process you will always help to cope with difficulties.
Barberry tinctures and their purpose
As already mentioned at the very beginning of the article, not only the fruits of the bush, but all its parts: branches, leaves, and roots are of benefit. A variety of tinctures are prepared from them, which also have a medical purpose. Let's talk about two options for how barberry is used here.
Recipes for preparing tinctures in front of you. The first is used for diseases of the biliary tract, liver, gallstone disease, hepatocholecystitis, hepatitis, exacerbations of chronic cholecystitis. Its preparation: for 100 ml of vodka or 40% alcohol we take 20 grams of barberry leaves. We insist for two weeks, then squeeze and filter. Store in a dark bottle in a cool dark place. You need to take three times a day for 25-30 drops for two to three weeks.
This tincture is also used in gynecological and obstetric practice: with bleeding, subinvolution of the uterus, etc.
Barberry tincture №2
And now we offer a recipe for another tincture of barberry, which is prepared for alcohol. It will help those who want to lose weight, including because it helps to quickly and efficiently cleanse the body. To this end, many drink goji berry tea. So, the ideal option for consolidating the result will be the reception of this tincture of barberry. She will also strengthen this result. We are preparing such a useful product on our own. We will need 200 ml of 70% alcohol and 20 grams of young leaves of the bush.
We rinse the leaves with warm water, grind them and send them into a glass bottle. Fill with alcohol and insist in a cool place or refrigerator for about two weeks. You need to take 30 drops three to four times a day after meals throughout the diet. Keep such a tincture strictly in the refrigerator.