Two ways to save cranberries for the winter to make a delicious pie or fruit drink in the cold
The sweet and sour red berries of cranberries are extremely useful, but as you know, this plant does not grow everywhere. Therefore, everyone who is lucky enough to buy cranberries immediately thinks about how to choose the best two ways to save cranberries for the winter, so that even in winter you can enjoy vitamins.
Two ways to save cranberries for the winter
Several simple ways will help to make cranberry stocks, which we will talk about in more detail later, namely:
- grind the berries with sugar;
- fill them with water.
Since in both cases the berries cannot be heat-treated, cranberry retains all vitamins and remains as useful as possible.
Whichever method you use, before harvesting the berries, you need to sort out, reject the spoiled ones, rinse thoroughly and let the excess liquid drain.
Grind berries with sugar
Cranberry sugar concentrate is made according to the same principle as harvesting raspberries. The washed and sorted berries must be sprinkled with sugar and crushed with a potato grinder to get a homogeneous mass. You do not need to pour in a lot of sugar, it is enough to observe a 1: 1 ratio. For those who like the sweeter option, you can slightly increase the amount of sugar. Put 1.5 kg of sugar on 1 kg of cranberries, but no more, since the mass will turn out to be too cloying.
Next, put the grated cranberries in clean jars, cover with nylon lids and refrigerate. A couple of days will pass, and the initially liquid mass will turn into a kind of jelly.
How to keep berries without added sugar?
Sugar is, of course, very tasty, but not everyone likes sweets and not everyone can eat it, especially in the presence of certain chronic diseases, such as diabetes. However, cranberries are perfectly stored without sugar. This requires a large glass jar and plain water.
The washed berries should be carefully and freely poured into the jar without tamping so that they remain intact. Then fill with water so that it completely covers them. Such a jar is stored in a cool place, preferably in the refrigerator. Oddly enough, but cranberries, flooded with water, can stand up to 2 years. However, it will not be possible to store it for so long - fresh berries, as if they had just been picked, will probably be eaten much earlier.
In the first method, even damaged, burst berries can be used, since they will still fray. For the second method, only whole cranberries need to be selected.
As you can see, there is nothing difficult in preparing cranberries for the winter. Choose the option that you like best and enjoy cranberry juice on cold evenings, imagining a warm summer.