What to do with gooseberies?

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Our gooseberreis are the Pixwell cultivar, We have a single bush that is bearing very well for the first time. I picked a yogurt cup full of unripe berries, having read that they are usable in various ways at all stages.

I cooked them for a few minutes and they taste much less sour after cooking. Added a bit of sugar, and I can see that this would make a good sauce for poultry--similar to using cranberries with turkey. I think I can freeze berrieis for that.

I think I could put cooked ones through the blender to make a frozen slushie drink.

I've read about making "fools"--whipped cream and gooseberries, but I don't think we'd use many that way.

I can also see that there really is a lot of pectin in them. Anyone have proportions for making jam or jelly with them?

Any other ideas for how to use gooseberries?

[LuxLiving]

Joan, I have never messed with gooseberries but have four recipes I could pass along - gooseberry sauce, jam, fool, pie. You can also use it in a jam cake after you've made jam. Let me know if you want any of these other recipes.

Gooseberry Jam
Cook 4 1/2 cups of gooseberries in 2 Tablespoons water over medium low heat until yellow. Add 2 cups sugar. Bring to a boil again and boil 5 minutes. Pour in jars and seal. You'll get 2 pints of jam.

This recipe came from Carla Emery's "Encyclopedia of Country Living".

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Thanks, Lux. That's easy. I think the jam would be a good thing to do with most of it, I could later turn jam into poultry sauce if I want.

I'll try to think of recipes that use little bits of fruit in them and maybe gooseberries can substitute for something else. Hmm, maybe my friend who experiments with barbecue sauces would like some.

[LuxLiving]

Gooseberry Sauce

Stew 1/2 lb. of gooseberries in 1/2 cup water until soft. Rub through a sieve. Return to pan. Add sweetening to taste and 1 Tablespoon of butter if you are planning to serve it as a relish with roast goose, duck, or mutton.

Again, this one from Carla Emery's "Encyclopedia of Country Living", pg. 466.

The BBQ sauce use is a good idea. You could also do a fruit leather and sweetened salad dressing with them too.

[cicy33]

I was going to say EAT THEM. I LOVE gooseberries.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

In the unripe state they are too sour to eat raw. When they are nearly ripe, I know the rabbits will wipe them out, so I have to take most of the crop unripe. When the shade from a neighbor's tree hits the bush today, I am going to pick berries to use in LuxLiving's jam recipe. I'll leave the ones on the higher branches to ripen. Maybe the rabbits cannot reach those.

The addition of butter to make a sauce for meat sounds good.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

LuxLiving, especially if the recipe is from a book you really trust, would you share the one for PIE when you get some time?

I've read that a mature bush should yield 4 to 8 quarts of berries. So far I've picked 10.5 quarts and there are a lot more on the bush. I'd guess about 6 or 8 more quarts! I put that down to dumb beginner's luck and not having pruned the bush the way it should have been.

They are starting to ripen faster than I can deal with them. This variety is not so sweet when it ripens, so it is better used green. Processing them is labor intensive, as they must be stemmed on both ends.

Most of the picked ones are processed and frozen, but I have made 8 pints of Lux's jam. Right now I am test-drying one cup cut with the berries cut in half, and one cup whole berries. I'm using an electric drier. But if they dry well, I can arrange next year to dry many more of them the old fashioned solar way.

So anyway, I'm ready to recommend this fruit to people who like to grow their own and who can find time to put into processing it all. Wish my sister still lived here. She would come chat and we'd stem berries together.

Oh yeah, eventually I think I'm going to try a sage and gooseberry jam. Doesn't that sound good? And for hubby, habanero and gooseberry! But I have to take berries out of the freezer for that later because peppers are only just beginning to bloom.

[DayByDay]

Snow White made gooseberry pie for the dwarfs.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Really? Cool! Perhaps I could market them under the name of Snow White's Pie Berries.

[LuxLiving]

Don't forget - you could make gooseberry wine!

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

They are so sour, I think they'd make a gawddawful wine! I ended up making a lot of jam which was good and one pie, which was so-so. I dehydrated five cups of them--gooseberry raisins to be re-constituted in who knows what? Fruit cake in winter, perhaps. Some are destemmed and in the freezer waiting for me to get around to them. Those will become jam, too.

I guess there are another 2 and a half quarts, still on the bush, finally ripened, yet the rabbits are not eating them this year. Ripe, they do not taste like much to me, either.

[mom-from-missouri]

Our local Perkins has gooseberry syrup sometimes (with pancakes). Could try that.