Creating Syrups

[CanGumby]

I've been playing with the idea of making syrup with fruits and veggies that are not normally used. Normally, I would just boil fruit with some water and sugar and end up with a tasty syrup. While this is fine for some kinds of fruits, it’s not as nice as it could be for others (ie: anything citrus). I’m trying to find a way to be able to reduce stuff like watermelon into a syrup (boiling it for many hours doesn’t sound like it will result in watermelon tasting syrup) or even create a lime syrup that doesn’t taste like it’s been cooked for hours upon hours.

 

So far, I’ve found three options:

 

1. Freezing the juice and manually removing the ice crystals. It sounds pretty tedious and not like it will give results that are as rewarding.
2. Boiling the juice. Which, for some fruits and veggies would be fine.
3. Using an aspirating pump to reduce the internal pressure of an Erlenmeyer flask with a sidearm and “boil” the water off at a reduced temperature.

Anyone have any ideas? Or advice on starting this adventure?

[CatPoet]

I only know how to make juniper syrup the old fashion, slow boiling way.

 

My friend however makes tomato and basil syrup by freezing and removing the  lump of ice that forms on top.

[CanGumby]

How viscous would that method make the syrup? I would like to see if I could make a bit of a variety, depending on application.

[Lisa Shock]

I make citrus syrup by extracting flavor from the peel with Everclear, then putting some (a few drops to a few spoonfuls) into simple syrup. Some fruit can be extracted well into alcohol, others not so much. A few, like water melon would probably do well centrifuged, with some components then added to syrup.

[andiesenji]

I have made watermelon and other melon syrups by the steam extraction method, which works great for many fruits - not so much for citrus, except for one exception - kumquats.

 

As I saved the watermelon and honeydew rinds for pickling, this method worked great for me. 

 

I have two and plan on putting one on ebay shortly - the smaller one as a friend wants the big one. 

 

I think mine was made in Finland - will have to look - but they all work the same and are very efficient at producing juices that are ready to bottle or can or to be turned into jelly. 

 

I used to make a celery juice "tonic" with herbs using the steam extractor - nothing else worked as well. 

[Lisa Shock]

Andi, when you made melon syrup, did you add sugar to the fruit?

[andiesenji]

Andi, when you made melon syrup, did you add sugar to the fruit?

[CanGumby]

What kind of difference do you find with your steam extraction from, say, more common methods? Juice volume? Clarity?

Also, I've got a little bottle of pectinex in the fridge, I suspect I could just add that to some lemons or limes and wait till I have separation then add warm simple syrup. Then freeze it and extract the ice? I'm just worried that leaving it sit for that long will make the lime juice start to lose any of the just-juiced flavors I'm shooting for.

[CatPoet]

Andie: that is the slow cooking method I was thinking.,  We just call it SaftMaja, mine is broke so I use another way of doing the same job, how ever it been a few years since I made saft ( fruitsyrup)

[andiesenji]

I like it because unless the fruits are mashed and crushed, the juice is quite clear and produces beautiful jellies.  However I also add it to whole fruits for additional flavor in jams, preserves and when I do combinations.

A friend's father, now no longer with us, used this method in a much larger vessel, to juice wild blackberries to add to his homemade wine.  He was Italian but his wife was a Sami - they had met at one of the Olympics in the 50s - and she taught him how to extract juices with the steamer. 

She told me about gathering cloudberries back home and having to have a couple of men along with noisemakers to drive the bears away so it would be safe for the women to pick them.   They made juice, jams, jellies and dried the berries for use during the winter.

She said they had tried growing them here (in the Tehachapi mountain area) but had little success, even back home they were difficult to cultivate.  She did give me a jar of cloudberry jam, sent from home, which was delicious. 

[CatPoet]

And I think I  miss interrupted the words in my brain.  Syrup in Sweden is high sugared flavoured concentrate  and    Saft is  fruit juice with a little  or a lot of sugar added and concentrated, drunk as cordial  with water   and I think that is what you call syrup  and my husband family calls squash...  

Languages are confusing!

 

If it is like saft, I am used to making that even though I haven't made it in a while. Rhubarb with vanilla used to be a favourite to make.