How to store, dry, freeze and process viburnum at home?

Not everyone knows how to store viburnum at home, although this berry deserves close attention of those who lead a healthy lifestyle. You can find viburnum if you take a walk through the autumn forest, you can grow it in your own garden. It is sold in specialized diet food stores, on the market, and its quality remains invariably excellent everywhere. It is a pity that it is not always possible to purchase this healing berry.

What is useful viburnum?

The traditions of its use in Russia for the treatment, prevention of diseases and just for the sake of pleasure to feel its refreshing taste have been going on for more than a century. A unique composition containing minerals, vitamins, organic acids and many more useful substances contributes to its widespread use:

• to maintain the tone of the heart muscle;
• for the treatment of gastrointestinal pathologies;
• for the treatment of skin diseases (lichen, acne);
• for the prevention of atherosclerosis, colds;
• as an additional tool in the treatment of disorders of the nervous system.

Knowing how to save viburnum for the winter at home, you can use these healing fruits for a long time.

How to collect viburnum?

The best time to collect it for harvesting for the winter is late autumn, the time after the first freeze. It is then that the fruits lose their inherent bitterness, become sweeter. Berries are not picked one at a time, otherwise they will lose their juice. The best way to collect is to cut brushes using a secateurs. You can transfer the brushes to a sufficiently thick layer in any container to the processing site. The peel of the berries is strong enough, and you can not be afraid that they will burst.

Fresh storage of viburnum

At home, you can store the berries directly in the brushes, putting them in a tightly closed container in the refrigerator or hanging in any cool room. You do not have to worry that the product will deteriorate or lose its healing properties; this will not happen for several months.

When storing brushes with berries in an apartment, the period of use of the product is slightly reduced. If it is not possible to store berries at low temperatures, it is advisable to process them.

Freeze viburnum

Staying on a tree, the berries quite easily tolerate frosty winters, if they do not become food for wintering birds. Even the viburnum brushes suspended on the balcony can endure prolonged frosts and preserve their taste and useful properties after thawing. In order to extend the period of use of medicinal berries, you can freeze them by separating them from the brush along with the stalks.

Tip

Washing viburnum in order to store it in the freezer is not necessary, it is done right before use.

The left stalks will not allow the juice to leak when laying berries for storage. Fruits are laid out in bags or plastic containers. If the berries are dry, then they will remain in a friable state even after freezing. From frozen viburnum, you can make fruit drinks, compotes, jelly, medicinal infusions.

Dry viburnum

You can harvest these berries for the winter by drying them in the oven. The brushes are laid out on a baking sheet, the regulator is set at 50-60 ⁰С. The oven door must be ajar so that the viburnum juice does not leak from the bursting berries. The stems after drying the berries can be removed. Dried viburnum should be stored in dry glass jars, covered with lids.

Tip

Drying is considered complete when the berries become wrinkled.

You can dry the berries for the winter not in such an intensive way, but simply by spreading them outdoors in the shade. The fruits are laid out on clean white paper, covered with gauze or a thin cloth. This method of drying takes time and patience, the berries need to be gently mixed from time to time.

Wipe with sugar

To preserve the healing properties of viburnum, such a method of harvesting for the winter as rubbing berries with sugar is perfect. To do this, it is necessary to sort out the berries, separate not quite high-quality ones, rinse the fruits in cool water, and dry.

For grinding, use the following methods:

• rubbing through a sieve;
• grinding with a blender;
• grinding the mass with a meat grinder.

Tip

You do not need to separate the seeds from the berries, so you will lose healthy juice. The crushed bones will not prevent the use of mashed viburnum.

The crushed mass must be mixed with sugar in a ratio of 2: 1, that is, there should be twice as much sugar as berries. It is laid out in sterile jars and stored in the refrigerator or in a cool basement. During long-term storage, the juice may separate and fall down the containers, but this does not affect the quality of the initial product. This method of harvesting berries for the winter allows you to save all the vitamins in them.

You can store mashed berries with sterilization in boiling water. Half-liter jars filled with crushed berries with sugar need to be sterilized for 10 minutes, and liter - two times longer. The amount of sugar during conservation can be halved compared to the previous recipe. After sterilization, the rubbed berries are rolled up and cleaned in a cool place.

Squeeze the juice

Separating the juice from the berries, you can stock up on a healthy product for the winter. The selected fruits are washed, sorted and sent to a juicer. In the juice obtained after pressing, add sugar and mix. It is mixed in a ratio of 1: 1, poured into sterilized dishes (cans, bottles). Viburnum juice should only be stored in the refrigerator.

You can replace part of the sugar with honey or use this recipe to store juice for the winter:

• berries of viburnum - 1 kg;
• water - 200 ml;
• honey to taste.

Squeezing the juice from viburnum, all the ingredients need to be mixed, boiled for 10 minutes and stored in a cool place. This preparation can be used for the preparation of viburnum pastille or jam, marmalade, fruit drinks, compote.

We make a cord

Medicinal cordial can be prepared from these healthy berries, preserving their healing properties for the winter. It consists of:

• juice of viburnum - 100 ml;
• water - 100 ml;
• sugar - 100 g;
• vodka - 500 ml.

All components of this recipe need to be moved and left to stand at room temperature for two days, then cork the liquor, bottling it. Storage of this drink is possible at any, even room temperature.

Cook jam, jelly, candy

For the winter you can prepare a lot of sweet viburnum goodies. To make jelly, it is enough to take a kilogram of berries and sugar and two glasses of water. First, the berries are boiled with water for half an hour. Then sugar is added to this mass and the jelly is cooked for another 45 minutes. It remains to put it in banks and roll it up.

For jam, you need to take 300 ml of water and 1.3 kg of sugar per kilogram of berries. For uniform impregnation of the fruit, they need to stand in hot syrup for 10-12 hours. Then jam is done, removing the foam, and packaged.

A tasty and healthy treat - viburnum pastille - is obtained from a kilogram of berries, cooked to softness in a glass of water. The mass wiped through a sieve is mixed with sugar and boiled again until the texture of soft dough. This mass must be decomposed on wooden baking sheets and dried in the oven.

Viburnum oil

For this product, you can use the cake remaining from the preparation of juice. It is passed through a meat grinder, poured with vegetable or olive oil in a ratio of 1: 4 (four times more oil than oilcake).For three weeks this remedy should stand in a dark place, insist. Squeezing the cake, it is poured into containers. The value of this undeservedly forgotten recipe is comparable to the benefits and healing properties of sea buckthorn oil.

Make vinegar

The benefits of such a natural product are comparable to those of apple cider vinegar. For viburnum vinegar, you need to put in a three-liter jar half a kilogram of berries, a glass of sugar, pour two liters of water. Aromatic vinegar can be leaves of blackcurrant and cherry. This jar should stand in a dark place at room temperature for about two months. During the first week, its contents are periodically stirred. Viburnum vinegar is ready when it becomes transparent.

The availability, ease of storage and harvesting of these medicinal fruits make them one of the most common products for use as a health remedy.