Turn your late summer harvest of chokecherries into delicious chokecherry syrup! This syrup is from a family recipe, and tastes delicious over pancakes, waffles, ice cream, in drinks, and more. Our recipe requires no pectin and uses just chokecherries, sugar, and water.Makes about 5 ½ cups of syrupGrain free, dairy free, vegan, gluten free
Collect your ripe chokecherries in a bucket or bowl, look for fruit that is dark purple and smooth, not mushy or wrinkled.
Sort through/pick through the berries in your bowl or bucket and remove leaves, stems, and any mushy or under ripe berries.
Fill the bucket or bowl with water and shake swirl the berries in the water, letting any additional stems, leaves, etc. rise to top and then dump off this water. Repeat as many times as needed (I did mine 2-3 times).
Put about 1-2 cups of chokecherries in a strainer to rinse through berries in a stainer, picking through them again if needed to remove any bad berries, stems, or leaves.
Add 3 pounds of sorted berries to a pot and cover with water about 1/2 to 1 inch above the berries (about 3-4 cups of water).
Heat the water and chokecherries until boiling, reduce the heat slightly to just below medium heat, cover, and simmer for about 15-20 minutes or so, scooping off foam that forms on top as needed. Add a little hot water to the pot as needed to make sure the berries stay covered with water as they cook.
Press the cooked berries and the cooking water through a food mill, or a cone and pestle, or a metal mesh strainer, to press the juice out of the berries. Discard the seeds and skins left behind.
Pour the juice through a juice bag or nut milk bag to strain out any pulp that made it through the food mill or strainer.
I got about 3 ¼ cups juice from my 3 pounds of chokecherries and cooking water. Cook 3 ¼ cups chokecherry juice to 4 ¼ cups sugar in a large pot until everything is dissolved and the mixture begins to boil.
Simmer the syrup uncovered for 10 minutes to thicken the syrup, stirring occasionally, scooping off any foam that rises to the top. I like my syrup thicker, so 10 minutes works good for me, but you can cook this less (like 5 minutes or even less) if you don't want a thick syrup.
If you end up with a different amount of juice than 3 ¼ cups, use the ratio of 1.3x sugar to juice for the syrup. So for every 1 cup of chokecherry juice, you'll use 1 ⅓ cup sugar.
Once the syrup is done cooking, take it off the heat and add it to jars for either canning or freezing.
Test taste the syrup (make sure your tasting sample is completely cooled) and if you need a little more tartness to the syrup, you can add a little lemon juice to adjust the tartness and sweetness. My first batch I added lemon juice, but with my second batch I didn't need it.
Canning instructions
Prepare your canning pot with enough water to cover your empty jars and heat to boiling (I usually start heating the canning water when I start making my syrup).
Sterilize about 5 to 6 8-ounce jars for 10 minutes in boiling water. According to new Ball canning recommendations, the lids and rings don't need to be sterilized, just washed in hot soapy water.
Put syrup into the hot sterilized jars leaving about 1/4 to 1/2 inch headspace and secure lids fingertip tight.
Add the jars of syrup to the hot water bath (making sure the water covers the jars by at least 1 inch) and boil for 10 minutes.
Remove the jars to a cooling rack and allow to cool completely. Check lid seals after 12-24 hours and store in a cool place out of direct sunlight.
Video
Notes
Since raw chokecherry seeds are toxic when crushed, don't be tempted to make chokecherry juice by crushing the raw chokecherries into juice with a blender since this will crush the seeds. Press cooked fruit through a food mill, a steel cone and pestle, or metal mesh strainer for separating the juice without crushing the seeds.The nutrition info is just an estimate, I had a hard time finding any nutrition info online for chokecherry juice by itself without the skin and seeds included. So the nutrition info here for the syrup is probably not accurate, just FYI.