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5 Easy Homemade Holiday Liqueurs

26 Oct

Seckel pears are small and make for a wonderful presentation in a glass when used to flavor brandy. But you can use any pears that you like.

Making homemade liqueurs is a fast and easy way to bring a special touch to holiday gatherings. It only takes moments to prepare and no special gear is necessary; the hard part is waiting the two to four weeks necessary to allow your liqueur to steep and age.

For many liqueurs you’ll use a vodka base, which basically lacks taste and color and will take on whatever flavor you want. But you can also use spirits like bourbon, brandy, rum or even tequila, which all do their part to enhance the flavor of the fruits and spices you use. The resulting liqueur can be served on its own, or added to other cocktails such as martinis, or eggnog. Here are some recipes:

BASIC HOW-TO

Marinate fruits and spices with sugar in vodka, brandy, bourbon, or rum for simple liqueurs that whip up in 15 minutes.

For all of the recipes, the process is the same; you take your flavorings and sugar, and place them in an earthen crock or a glass jar with a lid. (Make sure the mouth of the container is large enough to remove the flavorings later.) Cover completely with your alcohol, put on the lid, and shake. Store your concoction in a dark place, shaking every day for the first week or so, then leaving it sit for two to four weeks until the flavors are fully incorporated into your alcohol. When the liqueur is done, strain out your flavorings and either place the liqueur back into its original alcohol bottle, or transfer them to pretty glass bottles for holiday display.

Your flavorings can include fruits, nuts, herbs and spices, and as much sugar as you’d like. The amount of sugar you use is a matter of preference depending upon how sweet you’d like your liqueur. I generally start out with about 1/3 cup of sugar for a basic 750 ml bottle of liquor, and add more after the first week if I find the liqueur I’m making isn’t sweet enough for me.

What do you do with those fruits? I reserve the marinated fruits and use them in holiday desserts. Depending upon the fruit, you can chop them up and add them to holiday baking, or make a tasty topping from them. To do this, take your fruit and place in a saucepan. Mash roughly, and add additional sugar and  some water if there doesn’t seem to be enough liquid with the fruit. Simmer until the additional sugar is dissolved and a syrup forms around the fruits. Serve over ice cream or holiday cakes.

Seckel pears are only about 2″ to 3″ long with a sweet flavor and snappy skin.

SECKEL PEAR BRANDY

Seckel pears are small pears about 2″ long. They are very sweet with a nice skin that has a bit of a “snap” to it. They are not common to see (though marinated seckel pears are wonderful heated through and served whole over ice cream or next to cakes), so you can substitute regular pears for this liqueur. For seckel pears, just slice the top and bottom off and place them in your jar or crock. If you’re using regular pears, slice them into sections or chop roughly and add to your container. Some recipes call for peeling the pears first, but I don’t see the need for this since I am lazy. Add your sugar (I start with 1/2 cup and increase later if needed), fill your container with whatever brandy you’d like, and shake. Shake daily for the first week, and at the end of the week taste to see if it is sweet enough for you. If it’s not, you can add more sugar, making sure you shake regularly to dissolve. Store in a dark place while the liqueur is marinating.

VANILLA AND CINNAMON LIQUEUR

Bourbon lends itself to the taste of vanilla and cinnamon. It produces a wonderful sweet liqueur that can be served on its own, and makes a wonderful addition to eggnog. Simply take a bottle of bourbon and pour it into a jar or crock (you can just use the bottle as your marinating vessel, but realize that it might be difficult to remove the expanded cinnamon sticks later). Add a vanilla bean that has been split open and two to three sticks of whole cinnamon. Add your sugar, shake, and wait. Don’t forget to shake daily during that first week to dissolve all of the sugar.

I like Italian-style plums for plum liqueur, but you can use any kind. Just slit with a knife and marinate with sugar and vodka.

PLUM LIQUEUR

This is a simple but sweet and tasty liqueur that makes a WONDERFUL plum martini for the holidays. For a martini, dilute the liqueur with plain vodka to your taste, and serve with lime zest. To make this liqueur, take plums, slice a sizeable slit or two in each one, place the plums in your container, add sugar, and top with your vodka. Shake and wait. I like to use Italian-style plums for this for their more intense flavor, but you can also use regular plums.

ALMOND AND COFFEE LIQUEUR

This also makes a wonderful addition to a martini, especially a chocolate martini if this is something you want to impress guests with over the holidays. I like this to have a lot of almond flavor, so I roughly grind about 1 cup of almonds in my blender and add about 1/2 cup of whole coffee beans. Top with sugar and a bottle of vodka and shake well. You’ll need to strain this after your month is up to remove all of the almond bits.

This berry liqueur was made with blueberries and blackberries, but you can use any combination you’d like.

BERRY LIQUEUR

This is great because you can use just about any kind of berry for this, or a mix of berries. I like to mix blueberries and blackberries, but you can use whatever kind you want (use about a quart total of berries)! Just slice each fruit in half and put them in your jar or crock. Cover with your sugar and 750 ml bottle of vodka, and shake. Remember to shake daily for the first week to make sure your sugar is dissolved, and intermittently the few weeks following. I like to use a cup of sugar with this recipe, and serve it in cordial glasses with desserts or on its own. Very tasty!

 
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Posted by on October 26, 2012 in Holidays, Recipes, Uncategorized

 

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Add Sour Cherry Spirits to Your Food Preservation Arsenal

17 Jun

Sour cherries, sugar, and your alcohol of choice are all that’s needed to preserve this seasonal fruit. The final product can be used in cocktails, recipes or as gifts for the holidays.

When I bought my house a year ago, I scored a sour cherry tree in the front yard. It has never been pruned, is really too tall to harvest effectively, and leans over the roof of the house a fair amount. The birds love it, and the squirrels love it more. The aphids love it so much that I purchase lady bugs once a year to take care of the problem (it works great). Last year the birds and squirrels beat me to the ripe fruit. Not this year. Oh, no.

I harvested a pound of fruit off the tree this afternoon, which isn’t bad considering I’m not even 5′ tall and am terrified of heights. The ladder helped, but with the awkward hang over the roof and sheer height of the never-before-pruned tree, a pound was what I could manage. But what does one do with a pound of fruit? There really wasn’t enough for a batch of jam or sour cherry pie filling. But, it was the perfect quantity with which to make some tasty infused spirits.

INGREDIENTS

For 2 quarts of spirits

  • 1 pound of sour cherries, cleaned and pitted
  • 4 tablespoons of sugar (or more to taste)
  • 1 bottle (750 ml) spirits. I used bourbon but vodka or brandy would also work great!
  • A container with a lid large enough to hold it all

Pitting the cherries isn’t necessary, but it makes it much easier to make use of the fruit after it’s done its job infusing the liquor.

Pitting the cherries is optional, but at the very least they must all be pricked to allow the juice to infuse into the liquor. I like to pit the cherries myself–in a few months I can reuse the fruit to make ice cream or to include with other fruit in desserts, a BBQ sauce, or some other topping over a cooked meat or fish. Doing the work of pitting now saves me serious hassle later.

I used two quart-sized mason jars as my infusing containers, but you can use whatever you’d like. In each of the jars I placed half of the fruit and 2 tablespoons of sugar total, sprinkling it over layers of fruit in teaspoon increments. I then took a bottle of bourbon and poured half of the bottle in each of the jars. Giving each of the jars a good shake, I then placed them in a dark cabinet.

Over the next two months I’ll shake those jars frequently. For the first week I’ll shake them once a day to make sure the sugar is dissolved. After that, I’ll shake the jars once a week, or as often as I remember. In a month or two, the resulting goodness will be a thing to behold!

Layer sugar to taste in with your fruit. I used two tablespoons of sugar in each quart-sized jar.

The uses for the infused bourbon are many:

  • A tasty addition to cocktails
  • Drinking it straight in a cordial glass
  • A liquid addition to batters for cakes, cupcakes, scones, cookies, and more as a flavoring.
  • An ingredient in sauces for meats such as BBQ sauce, steak sauce, and more
  • Addition to stews and other thick soups as a flavoring
  • An ingredient in casseroles or hearty meat dishes
  • A wonderful holiday or hostess gift when poured into a decorative bottle
  • An item with which to barter with friends and neighbors

The fruit will have done most of its job infusing the liquor, but it can also be used as an ingredient in ice cream, alcoholic smoothies, various batters, or an ingredient in sweet sauces. But if I know myself (and I do), I’ll mostly be using both the infused alcohol and the fruit as an ingredient in one of my favorite libations, The Manhattan.

 
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Posted by on June 17, 2012 in Edible Plants, Food Preservation, Holidays, Recipes

 

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Food Preservation: Let’s Talk Ingredients

21 Feb

Acids, sugars, honey, syrups, and salts are common ingredients in food preservation.

Most people can probably list some general ingredients for preserving food: salt, vinegar, sugar, maybe one or two others. But most people have never really thought about the total “lay of the land” when it comes to ingredients that are used to preserve food worldwide. Knowing these basics, however, can open up your understanding of, and ultimate success with, preserving your own food. Let’s take the ingredients one-by-one (we’ll cover food preservation methods in a future Spin):

ACID

When people think of acid, they automatically think vinegar. Vinegar is, indeed, an important acid that is a key ingredient in food preservation. But there’s more to the world of acids than just vinegar. Lemons, citric acid, and vitamin C help to prevent discoloration when preserving food and, in the case of lemons, can help jams and jellies to set. These ingredients can also be good antioxidants, which help prevent food degradation. Acids make the physical environment in preserved food too acidic for harmful bacteria to grow effectively — vinegar is especially good at this.

In fact, vinegar is the king of acids when it comes to food preservation. Vinegar comes from the French word meaning “sour wine,” which indicates the long history of vinegar paralleling wine-making. For food preservation, there is a wide range of flavored and plain vinegar available to the homeowner. Ranging from a clear liquid (distilled white vinegar) to a rich maroon (malt vinegar), there is a vinegar to suit your food preservation needs be it a chutney, pickle, or spiced fruit.

ALCOHOL

Ah, alcohol…so many uses, so little time. Alcohol is used as an ingredient in different food preservation techniques such as pickling or with sugar to preserve fruits as jams, jellies, and spirits. The fruit and alcohol marriage, in fact, was discovered in Medieval monasteries where the preserved fruit was eaten first, then the fruit liquor enjoyed later.

Alcohol is a toxic inhibitor, meaning it prevents the spoilage of preserved foods. In fact, nothing can grow in pure alcohol and depending upon which kind of alcohol you use, it can blend wonderfully with just about any ingredient. From rum to brandy to vodka, alcohol has earned a place as one of the most useful and versatile of all food preservation ingredients.

Thick layers of fats and oils have been used as ingredients in food preservation.

FAT AND OIL

Before refrigeration fats and oils were important ingredients in food preservation. The main role was to seal in moisture and keep out oxygen, which spoils food, as a thick layer on top of the meat they were meant to keep. Butter, lard, fats from fowl, and vegetable oils all had a regular place as a food preservation ingredient.

But it can be a tricky to use fat as an ingredient to preserve foods; the layer of fat needs to be fairly thick (an inch at least) to prevent the food beneath from spoiling. It is best to get a fair amount of experience with this ingredient before counting on it as a staple in food preservation.

LYE

The function of lye is the opposite of acids; instead of making the physical environment too acid for bacterial growth, lye makes it too basic for bacterial growth. Traditionally lye was leached from hardwood ashes and was used by cultures all over the world as an ingredient to cure food. The Norwegian fish dish lutefisk uses lye and lye is used to cure olives, among others.

Modern food-grade lye can be difficult to obtain, can be expensive, and it is dangerous to use. The traditional method of leaching lye from hardwood ashes was effective in the past and lye is a wonderful ingredient for food preservation. Lye also has other uses such as in making soap and as an ingredient in other food processing such as in breads or to make hominy.

SALT

Salt is the oldest ingredient in food preservation, going back to Egyptian times when it was used to preserve both food and mummies. After the Egyptians, early Christians who could eat nothing but fish during Lent used salt to dry the fish for consumption since fresh fish was frequently difficult to get and transport.

Salt is used as an ingredient to both brine and dry meats and fish. Brine-curing meats involves soaking meat in a very strong salt water for what can be weeks at a time. Meats can also be dried by packing them well with salt, which slowly draws out the moisture. When using salt as an ingredient in preservation avoid table salt, which can have anti-caking agents that affect the quality and taste of your food. The best salts to use for preservation are preserving salt, coarse kosher salt, and kosher salt. Saltpeter is another salt essential for curing meats. Saltpeter is potassium nitrate, which was historically mined from saltpeter rock.

Sugars such as this maple syrup are probably the best known food preservation ingredient after salt.

SUGAR

Sugar is most frequently associated with preserving jams and jellies, but can also be included in pickles and chutneys to balance the flavors. Sugars as ingredients for food preservation come in many forms including granulated and preserving sugar, which are both white and produce the clearest and hardest-set jams and jellies. Other sugars include molasses and honey, maple syrup, and brown sugars of varying shades. These types of sugars add more distinct flavors to whatever is being preserved and also create softer products.

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Read our next installment: Food Preservation: Let’s Talk Methods.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Food Preservation, Hobbies and Arts, Kitchen Tips

 

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