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Strawberries are so yesterday - red currants are here



Oh, it is the firm belief of every Russian grandmother that the bounty of summer and vitamins needs to be preserved for winter. And the resulting jars of "vitamin loaded" berries, rubbed with sugar and stored in the small soviet era refrigerators, on the balconies, in the closets, so that in the darkest days of winter, when there are no fruits or berries in the stores, Russian "babushka" will put the spoonful of this very tasty sugar overloaded preserve in your bowl of farina cream and this normally-hated-by-every-kid breakfast brings you all the flavors of summer... and sea-berries, or black currant, or raspberries.. So it did not surprise me that the first thing I decided to do with the red currant crop was exactly that - sugar rubbed preserve. Simple: wash red currant, get rid of stems, unfortunate bugs (though rare on currants), bad berries. Put into a heavy pot and crush berries with stick mixer. Let them stay for a while, you could add a little sugar at this point (weight it!) - all this to extract more juice. Use fine mesh colander to separate the seeds. Weight what you get and add the same weight of sugar plus about 20%. Let it stand util sugar is dissolved, stirring the preserve once in a while. That's all,folks! Sterilize the jars, put the preserve in, put the some sugar on the top (another believe from my childhood that this will help with preservation) and store the jars... until you crave for red currant, which should not be long. Stir it when you open the jar.


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