Viburnum with Honey: A Winter Preserve
A wonderfully wholesome remedy — a lifesaver in bad weather and in sickness. This natural cold-and-cough remedy is good not just with tea, as a preventive, or as a filling for pies and an addition to buns, pastries, and desserts. If you fall ill, a cup of fragrant viburnum-and-honey infusion will quickly set you right. By thinning mucus, viburnum with honey helps it clear more easily and soothes the lining of the throat. Take a teaspoon three times a day before meals. Better still, wash it down with tea brewed from viburnum, raspberry, and wild strawberry leaves. Keep the preserve in the refrigerator, but take out the amount you need ahead of time before using it.
Cooking method
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Step 1:
Preparing the berries is the most important step — especially when you're putting them up for winter in this form. The berries grow on clusters.
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Step 2:
Strip the berries off the stems, but rinse them well first.
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Step 3:
To keep the preserve from fermenting, spread the washed berries out in a single layer and shake the surface they're on to get rid of excess moisture. In short, there should be no moisture left on the berries.
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Step 4:
While that's happening, get the honey ready — any kind you like. Ideally it should be like the one in the picture, that is, runny enough to pour.
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Step 5:
As soon as the berries are dry, crush them by whatever method is convenient. I used a blender. You can also just press them through a sieve.
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Step 6:
Then transfer this mass to a saucepan.
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Step 7:
Add the honey to this fragrant mass.
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Step 8:
After mixing everything very thoroughly, spoon the viburnum and honey into dry, sterilized jars and close them with ordinary lids.
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Step 9:
The viburnum turns out very tasty and pleasant. Yes, the seeds stay in this mass. If you don't like that, try grinding it through a meat grinder a few times or pressing it through a sieve.
- A few more tips: If you don't care for the bitterness viburnum is known for, pour boiling water over the berries. You can also freeze the berries before putting them in jars, or soak them in a salt solution, then rinse well, dry, and only then mix them with honey. If you don't have a blender or a meat grinder, it's no tragedy — reach for a potato masher. As a last resort, crush them with your fingers. After crushing the berries, you can also layer dry berries with honey in a jar; ceramic containers work well for this. Don't melt the honey to make it blend perfectly into the berry mass — heating it can turn a wholesome product into a harmful one because of the harmful substances released. When you strip the berries from the stems, don't throw away the stems or leaves — dry them, then brew tea with them in winter, adding some of your stored viburnum and honey. You can snip the clusters off with scissors or leave them whole. Remember that viburnum with honey doesn't just fight colds and coughs — it also helps with other problems, such as anemia, heart and blood-vessel conditions, and more.
Caloric content of the products possible in the composition of the dish
- Honey - 400 kcal/100g
- Viburnum - 26 kcal/100g
