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

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!

 

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!

 

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

 

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

 

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.

 

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

 

blackberry cobbler!! yum!

 

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