Rowancott Herbs - Recipe for Elderberry Cordial from Erica Hollis of Rowancott

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Autumn seasonal recipe

Why not gather some of Nature's bounty to make yourself a simple cold and flu remedy for the store cupboard?

Elderberry cordial recipe

This is a great recipe to keep in the store cupboard to ward off colds and flu – elderberry extract has been found particularly effective at destroying the H5N1 bird flu virus and is expected to also be active against “swine” flu.

Pick the heads of elderberries when all the berries are fully ripe and black – that makes them much easier to destalk by combing through with a table fork – but avoid any that look dried out as it is the juice we want to extract.

Ingredients:

1 kg elder berries removed from stalks using a fork
500ml water
400g cane sugar
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
20 allspice berries (or you can use cloves if preferred)

Preparation:

Place the berries in a deep glass or stainless steel saucepan and cover with water – I found half a litre easily covered 1kg berries but make sure they are covered.
Bring to the boil and simmer gently for half an hour until the berries have released their juice
Strain the liquid into a large measuring jug (the berries will be great in the compost heap)
Pour the strained liquid back into the pan and add 400g of sugar per litre of liquid
Add 2 teaspoonfuls of each of ground cinnamon and ground ginger per litre of liquid
Add 20 allspice (pimento) berries or cloves per litre
bring back to the boil and simmer for another half hour until all the sugar is dissolved
strain into sterilized bottles* with tightly fitting caps

[* Glass bottles may be sterilized (after thorough washing) by placing in a cold oven, heating up to 140degC (fan oven) or 150deg then allowed to cool again]