White currant preparations for the winter recipes: sugar-free, jam and jelly

It is almost impossible to find a garden that does not have at least a few currant bushes. And although the primacy among the species is firmly held by black currants, many gardeners are happy to grow white currants. The difference between white currants is not only in color, but also in taste. That’s why the variety of recipes for winter preparations from the berries of this currant is in no way inferior to red currants. Jam and jelly have an amazing taste and are distinguished by an unusual amber color.

About the benefits of berries

This berry is valuable for its high content of vitamins, sugars and organic acids. Don’t forget about potassium and iron, which are so necessary for blood vessels and the heart. A characteristic feature of white fruits is their high content of pectin, which has a beneficial effect on the blood and helps remove heavy metal salts from the body.

White currants are no less healthy than red or black ones

White currant compote

Preparing this compote is very simple. First you need to rinse the berries. You can peel it from the stalks, or you can put whole tassels in jars, shaking them slightly so that the berries are compacted. Prepare the syrup. For 3 kg of currants you need 1 liter of water and 0.5 kg of sugar (the amount of sugar can be changed to taste). Pour sugar into water, bring to complete dissolution and boil for several minutes. Cool the syrup to room temperature and pour into jars with berries. Close the jars and sterilize in boiling water for 3-4 minutes. If you want to add a little color to the compote, you can add a handful of rose hips, black currants or cherries.

White currant compote has a beautiful amber color

White currant jam

Preparing jam is no more difficult than compote. For 1 kg of berries you will need 1–1.2 kg of sugar. The berries need to be separated from the stalk, washed and dried, spread on paper napkins or towels. Cover the currants with sugar in the proportions of tbsp. sugar per tbsp. berries Place in a cool place for 7–8 hours. Pour two 2 tbsp into the rest of the sugar. clean water and bring to a boil. Add candied berries to the boiling syrup and cook over low heat until the berries become transparent. Roll the jam into sterilized jars.

To ensure that the product is stored well, wash the currants thoroughly and remove the stalks

Eating vitamins is not only healthy, but also tasty. You can please your children in winter with unusual candied white currants.

Classic jam

There are many preparations for the winter, where the main ingredient is white currants. Recipes often suggest mixing it with other fruits - for color or for added sweetness. This method of preparing white currants does not involve heat treatment. Thanks to this, all minerals and vitamins remain in the jam.

We pass one kilogram of currants through a meat grinder. Wash two oranges, cut them into pieces, and remove the seeds. We also pass it through a meat grinder. Combine currants with oranges. Add one and a half or two kilograms of granulated sugar. Stir until completely dissolved. To make your task easier, it is permissible to slightly heat the mass. Place the jam in a sterile glass container. If you plan to store it in the refrigerator, you can cover it with regular plastic lids.

Recipes for white currants do not ignore this common homemade preparation for the winter. Classic jam is prepared like this. Cover a kilogram of berries with the same amount of sugar. Let the juice stand out. Dissolve three hundred grams of sugar in two glasses of water. Cook the syrup. We put the berries in there (along with the released juice).

Cook, skim off foam regularly, stir. Place the clear jam into jars and seal. “Decorative” jam requires a different approach. First, prepare the syrup from a glass of water and half a kilo of sugar. Carefully place the bunches in it. Continue cooking, stirring very carefully so that the berries remain intact.

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Candied fruit recipe

Prepare 1 kg of berries. Wash and separate from the stems.
Pour 300 ml of water into 1.2 kg of sugar and put on fire. Boil the syrup for five minutes, then strain through cheesecloth folded in several layers and bring to a boil again. Pour the berries into boiling syrup, boil for five minutes, then remove from heat and leave for 10 hours.
After time, put on the fire, bring to a boil and cook until tender.
Pour the boiling mixture into a colander and leave for several hours to allow the syrup to drain completely and the berries to cool. The resulting syrup can be rolled into jars as jam. It is no longer needed for making candied fruits.
Sprinkle the dish with sugar and place the berries on it in heaps, each heap containing 10–12 berries. Place in the oven and dry at 40 degrees for about three hours.
Take the berries out and roll them into balls, sprinkle them with sugar and put them back in the oven for three hours at 40 degrees.
To prevent candied fruits from drying out before winter, they can be rolled up in sterile jars.

The syrup is ready when the sugar has completely dissolved in it.

What sweets can you make?

A variety of sweet dishes can be prepared from fresh translucent fruits. The high pectin content allows you to make jelly according to different recipes (with the addition of any berries).

Other sweet dishes:

berry mousse;
fruit drink;
vitamin compote;
desserts (pudding, cheesecake);
jam;
jam.

It is better to store preparations for the winter in a cool place. You should not leave them where light will fall on them. But you shouldn’t keep jars in a damp room either.

Jelly recipe

White currants have everything necessary for high-quality preparation of jelly: taste, aroma, and most importantly, pectin. This is amazing: you don’t need to dilute the gelatin; the berry mass thickens on its own. For jelly you will only need berries and sugar, and you will need gauze.

Ingredients:

1 kg of fruits;
0.5 kg sugar;
0.5 glasses of water.

What needs to be done step by step:

Take an enamel pan, put the berries in it, and fill it with water.
Cook for 20 minutes.
Crush the berry mixture with a fork or pestle to release the juice.
Strain the puree through cheesecloth so that the juice flows into a separate container.
Hang gauze over it and leave it overnight to allow the juice to collect well.
Collect the liquid in a saucepan, add sugar, cook until thick.

The jelly is ready! It can be cooled and poured into jars or consumed fresh. The color of the product is beautiful, light amber. This is a great addition to toast or pancakes. The preparation can be stored for several months, provided that you have thoroughly sterilized the jars. If you add cherries, red currants or other berries, you will be able to get a brighter color of the delicacy.

Five-minute jam for the winter

You can make jam from white currants in just five minutes. In fact, you will need a little more time, but the result is worth it.

The first stage is the longest: you need to carefully sort out the berries, remove green and overripe ones. You should also prepare jam jars in advance and wash them. Containers should be sterilized immediately before pouring the product into jars.

The second stage is making jam. You will need berries and sugar in a ratio of 1:1.5. For example, 1 kg of berries and one and a half kilograms of sugar.

What should be done:

Divide the sugar into two parts (1/3 and 2/3 - the smaller part will be needed for the syrup, the larger part should be added to the berries later).
Boil syrup from 200 ml of water and 0.5 kg of sugar.
Pour syrup over berries.
Bring the mixture to a boil, add the remaining sugar.
Cook for 5 minutes.

After the mixture has cooled, you can pour it into jars.

How to make jam?

Jam has a more delicate consistency. The recipe for its preparation is similar to the recipe for jam, but in this case you need to additionally rub the dessert through a sieve and remove the pulp (berry mass - seeds, peel). The ratio of berries and sugar in this case is exactly the same (1:1.5). Make sure that the volume of water strictly matches the recipe - one and a half glasses of water.

How to cook:

You need to sort the berries, wash them, dry them.
Take a wide saucepan, place the fruits there, add 1 glass of water, heat for 10 minutes.
Rub the mixture through a sieve.
Sprinkle the resulting puree with sugar and cook over low heat for 40 minutes.

Compotes

Berry compote is very easy to prepare. It has one peculiarity - the drink is extremely rarely prepared from white currants alone. As a rule, another berry is added for color.

To prepare the compote, take:

half a kilo of white currants;
3 liters of water;
a handful of other berries;
200-400 g granulated sugar.

How to cook:

Make syrup from water and sugar.
Place white currants and other berries in jars.
Pour syrup over fruits.
Pasteurize for 20-25 minutes.

Interesting! If you take rose hips as an additive to compote, then such a dessert can be used to treat colds.

How to prepare juice?

The juice is prepared quite simply. The main thing is to sort the berries well! Your actions:

Separate the juice from the pulp (it must be squeezed out manually, on a press or using a juicer).
Filter the juice.
Place in an enamel pan, heat to 85°C and maintain at this temperature for 5 minutes.

After this, you can pour the product into jars. Then the juice poured into jars should be pasteurized in a water bath at a temperature of 85-90 ° C for 15 minutes.

Interesting! White currant juice improves appetite and normalizes intestinal function.

Pies and pies

White currants are juicy, so baking pies from them is quite difficult (juice leaks out). To avoid this, it is recommended to reduce the volume of filling. You can make a large open pie or small pies (also open) from the fruits.

Take:

100 ml kefir;
80 ml sunflower oil;
110 g butter;
250 grams of wheat flour;
200 g sugar;
200 g currants;
3 eggs.

How to do:

Using a mixer, beat the eggs with sugar.
Add sunflower and melted butter, kefir, beat.
Add flour, stir so that there are no lumps.
Add fruits and stir.
Cover the pan with parchment and pour in the dough.
Place in a hot oven (180°C) for about 1 hour.

Small pies can be made from ready-made yeast or puff pastry. For them, it is better to use ready-made jam or jam. But fresh harvest will do too!

Algorithm:

Divide the dough into balls and let rest for 15 minutes.
Place the dough in rows on the baking sheet, 5cm apart.
Make indentations in each piece.
Place the filling into the indentations.
Place the pies in the oven, preheated to 180 ⁰C.

White currant wine

While the kids are waiting for delicious candied fruits, their parents may be interested in a recipe for white currant wine. For 10 liters of wine you will need:

4 liters of currant juice;
2.4 kg sugar;
4.5 liters of water;
1 liter of vodka.

Carefully sort the berries, remove twigs and spoiled fruits. Rinse, dry and squeeze out the juice. Pour 1.6 kg of sugar into the juice and put it in a cool place for 10 days.

White currant wine is a real dessert: aromatic, with a delicate taste

When the time is up, you need to alcoholize the wine. To do this, add vodka in a ratio of one to ten. Let the wine brew for another 5-7 days.

Add the remaining sugar to the wine, mix thoroughly and pour into bottles, which are then tightly closed and stored in a cool place. After two to three months, the wine can be served.

Fragrant currant jelly

White currant jelly will be no less popular with children and adults in winter. The secret of this recipe is that it is prepared with virtually no sugar. For one liter of juice you need no more than 0.25 tbsp. Sahara.

Wash and mash the fruits. Cook the resulting berry pulp over low heat for five minutes. Place in a colander and rub the pulp with a wooden spoon to strain out the juice. Pour sugar into the resulting juice and boil for a quarter of an hour. The jelly is ready, all that remains is to roll it into a sterilized container and wrap it. Well, you can add a little sugar to the remaining berry squeezes and boil for five minutes. By morning you will have an excellent compote.

How to choose the right berry

White currant, from which we will learn how to make here, is a specific product. Traditionalists, who are accustomed to the fact that jam must certainly be red or orange, often mix this berry with ruby or black bunches, cherries or raspberries. And people who love originality use the transparent color of white currants to create decorative preparations for the winter.

For example, canning berries along with cuttings, preserving the integrity of the bunches. You can combine white currants with pieces of unpeeled orange. It is better to collect berries for preparations in sunny and dry weather. Next, you need to sort them out, removing random debris and leaves. If not specified in the recipe, remove the cuttings.

Then they need to be washed thoroughly and dried a little. To make white currant jelly, you need to extract the juice. The bones of this species are large. They clog the juicer and, when crushed, have a bad effect on the taste of the jelly. The old grandmother's method remains - rubbing through a sieve. To prevent the berries from resisting, they are scalded with boiling water.

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White currant marmalade recipe

Everyone loves marmalade, especially when it is prepared at home according to a proven recipe, without chemical additives or impurities.

Currant marmalade retains all the benefits of fresh berries. Your children will be delighted!

Procedure for preparing dessert for the winter:

Pour 2 tablespoons of water into the bottom of the pan, add 1 kg of berries and cook until completely softened.
Rub the resulting mass through a sieve, mix with sugar (2.5 tbsp.) and cook until tender. Check readiness drop by drop: it should not spread over the plate.
Pour the finished marmalade into molds and leave to harden. Roll in sugar and store in sealed jars in a cool place.

Advice. Another way to prepare white currants without sugar is pickled currants. Yes, yes, maybe it will seem strange to some, but currants prepared according to this recipe are perfect for meat and poultry. If you want to surprise your family and friends, be sure to prepare this for the winter.

4Marmalade

The cake remaining after making the jelly can also be put into circulation by preparing a delicious marmalade rich in vitamins. Ingredients:

1 kg berry pulp
700 g sugar

Recipe:

The cake is steamed in a small amount of water. If it turns out to be less than a kilogram, then you can add fresh berries to it. It is then passed through a meat grinder and then rubbed through a sieve. This is necessary so that the puree is homogeneous. Place it on low heat in an enamel container and gradually add sugar.
If the mass begins to thicken, add a couple of tablespoons to it. water, constantly stirring the mixture itself. Cooking will last 25 minutes.
After boiling, the marmalade will weigh exactly 1 kg. Its readiness is checked by dropping a drop of the mixture onto a plate - if it does not spread, then it is ready. You can pour it into molds and cool in the refrigerator. The frozen marmalade is sprinkled with powdered sugar.

White currants can be used in many different recipes that are easy to prepare and have health benefits.

Pickled currants and sauce for different types of meat

Place 5 peppercorns, 10 cloves and a pinch of cinnamon into sterilized liter jars. Wash the currants and dry them directly on the branches. Place in jars up to the shoulders. For more dense packing, the jars can be shaken slightly. Boil the marinade. For 1 liter of water you need 150 ml of apple cider vinegar and 0.5 kg of sugar. Pour the boiling marinade into the jars, set the jars to sterilize for 5 minutes from the moment the liquid boils in them. Roll up the lids.

Surprise your loved ones with unusual currant sauces for main courses

In addition to pickled currants, the sauce is ideal for meat, which is also worth stocking up on for the winter. The sauce recipe is very simple:

For 300 g of currants, take 100 g of dill and garlic;
grind it all using a blender or meat grinder;
add 50 g of sugar and bring to a boil;
The sauce can be eaten immediately after cooling or stored in jars for the winter.

How to freeze or dry currants

Frozen and dried berries remain the undisputed leaders in health benefits. After all, unlike other methods of preparing for the winter, they are not subjected to heat treatment.

Currants are dried just like any other berries. Lay out in one layer on a baking sheet covered with parchment, so that the berries cannot dry out not only on top, but also on the sides, and leave in the oven at a temperature of 40–60 degrees. There is no need to close the oven door. After two hours, check if the berries do not stick together in your hand, then the currants are ready. Dried berries should be stored in tightly closed jars.

Freeze the berries by placing them in an even layer on a baking sheet.

There are two ways to freeze currants: in the form of puree with sugar and without sugar as whole berries. For the first method, grind the berries through a meat grinder or chop using a blender, mix with sugar to taste, place in molds and put in the freezer. The resulting frozen tablets can be placed in one container. You can even eat this puree as ice cream.

Attention! Frozen berries should never be re-frozen - the quality of the product will decrease.

The second method involves freezing without sugar - whole berries. To do this, the berries need to be laid out on a board in one layer so that they do not stick together and put in the freezer. When the berries are frozen, they must be poured into a plastic container or bag.

Berries frozen using any of these methods can be used to cook compotes and make cocktails, even when it’s bitter winter outside and there’s a blizzard blowing outside the windows. And is winter really that scary when your pantry and refrigerator shelves are filled with jars of summer with the sweet smell of currants?

Freezing methods

There are several freezing methods. Each of them has its own advantages and is suitable for preparing different dishes.

The recipes described below are used for freezing not only black currants, but also red ones. These methods are also suitable for other berries.

Whole berries

This freezing option is universal. It does not involve the use of sugar. Such currants are suitable not only for desserts. It is used to prepare sauces for meat, added to cake batter, yoghurts, cocktails, etc. It is easy to make compote or jam from frozen currants.

Since sugar is not used entirely when freezing currants, they can be eaten by people who are on a diet. When defrosted correctly, the berries retain their shape and look fresh. The taste of frozen whole currants is practically no different from fresh ones.

How to freeze whole berries:

Prepared dry berries are laid out in one layer on a tray, parchment paper or other substrates. Place in the freezer.
If the freezer has a blast (quick) freezing function, turn it on for 20 minutes. If not, leave the berries in the freezer for 12 hours.
Frozen berries are transferred to one large bag or tray.

Properly frozen whole berries do not stick together, so they are not portioned out. It is always convenient to get the right amount of currants from the general package.

Cracked and bruised currants are not suitable for this recipe. Even a small amount of moisture will cause the berries to stick together.

Some housewives use another method of freezing whole berries at home. They do not remove them from the branches, but simply wash them and dry them completely. Then they are laid out on substrates in one layer and frozen. Store in trays or bags. It is believed that this way currants retain more vitamins.

As a puree

Pureeing blackcurrants is another way to prepare berries for the winter. The recipe contains sugar. Currant puree makes delicious pies, toppings for pancakes and ice cream.

If you simply defrost such a preparation, you will get jam with a fresh taste and aroma. If you boil it, it becomes jam that will not spoil in the refrigerator for several weeks.

How to prepare:

1 kg of prepared dry currants is covered with 1 tbsp. Sahara.
Grind using a potato masher, puree in a blender or twist in a meat grinder. Taste the puree and add additional sugar if necessary.
The currant puree is placed into portioned cups or silicone muffin tins and placed in the freezer.

When the berry puree freezes, to save space, remove it from the molds and transfer it to a bag. Store in the freezer, covered.

Cracked and bruised currants are suitable for this recipe. The main thing is that it is fresh.

In syrup

This is one of the most unusual ways to freeze currants. These berries are suitable for making desserts and adding to pies.

How to freeze berries in syrup:

Prepared dry currants are laid out on trays and placed in the freezer.
Boil sugar syrup. To do this, take 0.5 kg of sugar per 1 liter of water. The mixture is boiled until the crystals are completely dissolved.
Frozen currants are mixed with cooled but not hardened sugar syrup.
Place the berries in a colander, allow excess liquid to drain, and place them in one layer on a tray previously covered with cling film or parchment paper.
Freeze again. After this they are poured into bags.

Currants frozen in this way are covered with an icy sweet crust.

In sugar

Whole currants frozen with sugar are a convenient preparation for making jam, compote, and dessert toppings at any time of the year. This recipe does not take much time, but makes cooking easier in winter.

To prepare currants according to this recipe:

A layer of prepared berries is placed at the bottom of the plastic tray.
A layer of sugar is poured on top so that the currants are completely covered with sweet crystals.
Layers alternate until the container is full.
Cover the container with a lid and put it in the freezer.

Some housewives use another method: