One of the most popular berries in cooking is cranberries. It is appreciated for its unique taste, sweet and sour, with a barely noticeable bitterness, and for its own benefit. Its properties are known to increase immunity, cleanse the body, improve appetite and digestion. Therefore, having collected a lot of this berry, zealous hostesses do not miss the opportunity to prepare it for future use, for example, to cook cranberry compote for the winter.
Cooking Tips
Cranberry compote will come out tasty and appetizing, it will be good to stand all winter if you use the advice of experienced housewives.
- Cranberries should be carefully picked, removing crushed berries, leaves and stalks. However, leaves and berries that have a sub-standard appearance should not be thrown away: the leaves can be brewed along with tea, so that it will be more aromatic and healthier, and the fruits can be used to make jam or rub them with sugar.
- Selected cranberries should be well washed in running water and be sure to dry using a paper towel.
- Cranberry marsh, from which compote is most often made, is very acidic, so you shouldn’t regret sugar when preparing compote, adding much more to it than for making drinks from other berries. If you use homemade cranberries, which is a hybrid of marsh cranberries and gooseberries, sugar should be added to one and a half times less than indicated in the recipe, since this variety is much sweeter in itself.
- Vitamin C, for the high content of which many value cranberries, is destroyed by heat treatment. If there is a desire to preserve the benefits of cranberries, you will have to retreat from the traditional technology of making compote from it. In this case, it is not necessary to sterilize the jars with compote, and the syrup, with which the berry is poured, must be cooled to a temperature slightly above room temperature. However, it should be borne in mind that compote prepared without cooking berries and sterilization, can only be stored in the refrigerator.
- Banks for the preservation of cranberries must be sterilized, the lids for their seaming also.
To improve the taste of cranberry compote, you can add other berries and fruits to it by selecting the appropriate recipe.
Cranberry compote in a 3-liter jar
Composition (3 liters):
- cranberries - 1 kg;
- water - 1 l;
- sugar - 1 kg.
Method of preparation:
- Sort, wash and dry the cranberries.
- Sterilize the jars and spread the prepared berry on them. Compote for this recipe turns out to be concentrated, so it is better to take small banks, for example, liter.
- Boil water and add sugar in it. While stirring, achieve complete dissolution. Cool the syrup to about 80-90 degrees.
- Fill the berry with hot syrup. Cover the jars with pre-boiled lids.
- In a large container, place a wooden circle (for example, a board) or lay a towel.
- Put jars of cranberry compote in the container.
- Pour warm water into the container so that it reaches the “shoulders” of the banks.
- Put the container on low fire. Sterilize the jars, if they are liter, 20 minutes. For half-liter cans 10 minutes is enough, but if you use a three-liter jar, then it needs to be sterilized for 40 minutes.
- Remove the jars from the container using a special grab. Roll hermetically sealed lids.
- Turn the jars upside down, put them on the covers, and roll them up in a blanket.
- Once the cranberry compote jars are barely warm, they can be removed for storage in the pantry.
The compote prepared according to this recipe is useful and is well kept at room temperature all winter.
Cranberry compote with apples without sterilization
Composition (3 liters):
- cranberries - 0, 2 kg;
- apples - 0, 6 kg;
- sugar - 0, 3 kg;
- citric acid - 5 g;
- water - 2, 5 l.
Method of preparation:
- Wash the apples and, removing the core, cut into equal slices. Put on the bottom of a sterilized jar.
- Wash and dry the cranberries. Take on a compote only ripe, rich color. Put the berry on top of the apple slices.
- Sprinkle apples and cranberries with sugar.
- Pour citric acid into jars.
- Boil the water.
- After boiling water for 5 minutes, pour a little into the jar, filling it by about a third. Cover the jar with a lid, pre-sterilizing it.
- After 5 minutes, fill the jar with the remaining boiling water and roll it up.
- Place the can upside down and wrap well - the can should cool for more than 12 hours.
- After cooling the jar of cranberry-apple drink, remove it for the winter.
It is better to keep such a compote in a cool place, but it will not disappear at room temperature either.
Cranberry compote like almost everyone, but not everyone can drink it in unlimited quantities, even if it is made with sweet apples. Drink it is strictly contraindicated for people with diseases of the stomach caused by high acidity, and it is better not to drink it healthy on an empty stomach. In all other cases, cranberry compote will only benefit. It is especially good if served cool.
