Category: Food

Using elderflowers

Drying elderflowers for tee and infusing our own apple juice with elderflowers

We are having rain on a regular base this spring, but I luckily found a long enough dry time to be able to harvest some elderflowers. Elderflowers have good properties (which you could look up some where else if you are curious) and we love the flavour it gives to the apple juice.

Processing the elderflowers is very easy.

Pick the elderflowers which just flowered, after dry wetter for at least 1 – 2 days. The best time for picking is after the dew dried. I checked every elderflower I picked for bugs and dirt and put them in a bowl.

A bowl filled with picked elderflowers

I left the elderflowers somewhere protected for a few hours, so any bugs I missed while picking have the change to leave.

For drying, cut the bigger stems and divide the flowers over trays. I dried the elderflowers in the dehydrator at the lowest temperature (35°C) for about 10 hours. It took quite some time for the stems to dry as well. I should take more time for cutting the stems away next time, so there will only be the elderflowers with very small stems left. I store this in an airtight glass jar. We will use this for tee.

To infuse apple juice, I filled 2 big glass jars half way with the elderflowers and topped them up with apple juice from our own apples from last fall. I just left this in a dark spot (not the refrigerator) for about 24 hours.

2 glass jars filled with apple juice with elderflowers floating in it

Then it was ready to be strained and it smelled and tasted wonderful. Obviously we tried some juice immediately and I canned the rest to enjoy later. I canned it in a water bad by bringing it to a boil and let the water boil for about 15 minutes. I processed it for 15 minutes since I did not sterilize the jars first. Not sterilizing the jars first is something I do and not something you should copy. Most of the times this goes well, but sometimes we do lose produce.

Last time I made this I had the jar completely filled with the elderflowers and the result was way to strong in taste. We had to delude the elderflower infused apple juice to make the elderflower-flavour gentler.

Harvesting and preserving Chili’s

Dehydrating Chili’s

We went on a trip beginning of September, bad timing of course, and the first chili’s where just ripening. By the time we would come back a part of the chili’s would probably be bad, so a harvest and preserving is necessary before we leave.

So a quick round trough the greenhouse and the chili patch outside gave a mountain of, mainly green, chili’s. I do prefer to wait until chili’s turn red, but with bad timing we will have to do with a lot of green once this time.

Cutting them took some time and then I put them in the dehydrator. I dehydrated them for about 15 hours at 70°C, which turned out to be a bit too long (I forgot to check on them in between) and the chili’s came out roasted. I hope they will not have a burned taste; we have not tried them yet.

Sliced green and red chilies in a dehydrator

I filled all chili’s in jars for storage.

Roasted dried chilies in jars

We will use these to make sweet chili sauce and I am probably going to make some chili flakes or powder (what works best) to spice up some dishes.

Making tomato powder for the first time

The tomato powder did not turn out quite right

We had some more tomatoes as we would eat trough and I saw a video of someone making tomato powder, which is nice to season food with and is a space saving storage way, so I wanted to try that out.

The amount of tomatoes I used did not quite fill up my dehydrator, but that is fine. I am just trying this out to see how it turns out and if I will be using the tomato powder at all.

Since I also had a lot of small tomatoes, the cutting took quite some time. I had set the dehydrator on 70°C for about 15 hours. I will be using the tomato powder in cooking, so there is no advantage in using a lower temperature.

Wooden cutting board with tomato slices and a rack from a dehydrator with tomato slices, lying on a table

After the dehydrator finished, I checked a few tomato slices and thought they where perfectly dry, but, while putting all of the dried tomato slices into my food processor, I noticed not all tomato slices where dry enough. I also do not know if the food processor is the right tool for this, but I did not really get a powder. I have more like some what sticky tomato crumbles, but that is ok, they will be used anyway. Just to be on the safe side, I will be storing this jar in the refrigerator.

Tomato crumbles in a jar

For next year, if I will have enough tomatoes, I should check more of the tomato slices to see if they are dry enough and just let the dehydrator run maybe an hour longer or so.