Elderberry Vinegar Anyone?

Here at Woodland Ways our instructors are renoun for the quality of the food that we can serve up with a simple dutch oven, a fire, and a few wild ingredients. Wild food foraging is often seen as bland and dull, mainly involving nettles and soup! But as always we buck the trend and show you what is possible.

We thought then that we would share a series of recipes with you to get the taste buds tingling, how about some Elderberry Vinegar.

This makes a thick, slightly sweet, syrupy vinegar very much like balsamic. There are several different ways of making this depending on how much time you have available.

Remove the elderberries (Sambucus nigra) from the stalk with your fingers or a fork and gently pound with the end of a rolling pin or mash with a fork. Then either place with the vinegar into a bowl and leave, covered, in a cool place for a few days strain off the liquid then add the sugar and place on the stove and bring to the boil, stirring to make sure the sugar is dissolved then bottle.

A quicker option is to place the pounded or mashed berries in an oven proof dish with the vinegar and sugar and put in to the oven at 1500C for about 90 minutes stirring every now and then, strain and bottle.
We’ve found that for a super quick version, pound the berries then simply put all the ingredients into a pan and on a low heat simmer for 10-15 minutes until the sugar is dissolved, strain and bottle.

For every 100g of elderberries you will need about 150ml of vinegar (red wine, white wine, cider or a mixture) and 50g of sugar.

Join us on a foraging course to discover more of these wild food delights.