Blackberries Everywhere... Help!!!!!!!

[CoopCrazy]

Ok I have 5 gallons of blackberries from my Grandmother's orchard.. Plus she is going to Florida for a few months and wants me to go over every couple of days and pick more .. So I will be overflowiing with blackberries for the next few weeks... I need some ideas to Can, Preserve, Freeze, etc...

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don't know how you use blackberries. My wife cannot eat the seeds due to medical considerations so I make juice out of them, then can the juice. It is one of the easiest cannings I do, it being a quick water bath method. Just find a good recipe. The juice can be used to make jelly, cobbler, or whatever at your convenience. I did two cannings this year. Out of about three gallons I got 4-1/2 quarts of juice. Then out of about 4-1/2 gallons, I got about 5-1/2 quarts of juice. Not sure why the difference per gallon.

To keep the berries "fresh" while I was getting enough for a canning, I would freeze them and store them in zip-loc type bags. I did it two different ways. I look them and rinse them well. Some I dried off and put on a cookie sheet on wax paper in the freezer. A couple of times while they are freezing I stirred them up so they wound up frozen as individual berries instead of a solid clump. The others I just put in the bags and froze them in a clump. Both worked well for canning, but if you need to measure them for a recipe the individually frozen berries are real handy. With 5 gallons of berries, that would take a lot of cookie sheets and freezer space to individually freeze them. How you plan to use them may help you make that decision.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

 

[Yard full o' rocks]

We make blackberry jam here in NW Ga!! It is excellent on cornbread or biscuits.

Its also good warmed up and poured on vanilla ice cream.

As a side note, my chooks LOVE 'EM too!

 

[paddock36]

I make jam or jelly too but I strain out the seeds.

 

[CoopCrazy]

Any body have recipes for the jellies and jams.. I would really like to make some...

 

[angelique_redhead]

You might want to try this one. It looks like it would work well. http://www.pickyourown.org/jam.htm

: Angelique

 

[urbanfarmer101]

I like to put the whole berries on a cookie sheet, single spaced and freeze them over night. The next day I pop them off and put them in a freezer bag. This way they don't all stick together in a big clump. I use them for smoothies and pies. We are just picking black rasberries here, the Blackberries are not ready yet.

If you are making jelly/jam, follow the recipe on the box of sure-jell.

 

[ChickenToes]

Do you have an ice cream maker? Blackberry ice cream is divine...you can also make refrigerator ice cream if you don't have an ice cream maker, here's a link. There's instructions on how to make berry ice cream below the recipe.

http://www.cookstr.com/recipes/basic-refrigerator-ice-cream

 

[PATTENJP21]

blackberry cobbler!! yum!

 

[onthespot]

maybe you could use up a BUNCH of them by making fruit leather.