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 A low shrub with thorny shoots is called a gooseberry. It blooms in May, bears fruit in July - early August. The flowers are small, greenish or reddish. Fruits - berries of various sizes, shapes, colors with high taste. The pulp is very juicy, covered with skin and contains many seeds. For long-term storage, the berries are frozen or sprinkled with sugar. Due to its taste and nutritional qualities, gooseberries are called "northern grapes".
The fruits contain many bioactive substances. This is first of all glucose, fructose and sucrose... Rich in gooseberries and organic acids. These include lemon, apple, wine, gluco-amber. Berries are a storehouse of vitamin C. They also contain a lot of carotene, nitrogenous substances, mineral salts of magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, iron, chlorine, copper, sodium.
The healing properties of gooseberries are used for obesity and metabolic disorders. Fresh berries have a beneficial laxative effect on regular constipation. Gooseberries are recommended for treating liver, bladder and kidney diseases. Berries are used for anemia and hemorrhages. Water infusions of leaves are prescribed for tuberculosis. A decoction of the fruits is effective for stomach diseases. And the seeds help with menstrual irregularities.
Gooseberry jam is very tasty and healthy. When cooking, you need to remember that the skin of the berries is tough, low-permeability, and sugar cannot get inside the fruit. Therefore, before starting cooking, it is necessary to cut off the top of each berry and at the same time remove the seed chamber. Then rinse in a bowl of cold water. In this case, the remaining seeds will float to the surface.
Boil gooseberry jam begin as follows. Gooseberries are placed in a container and poured over with warmed sugar syrup. At the same time, 900 g of sugar dissolved in 2 glasses of water is taken for 1 kg of gooseberry fruit. The gooseberry syrup is kept for 10 hours. The container is turned from time to time in a circular motion. Then the berries are separated from the syrup using a colander. The syrup cleared of berries is boiled for 5 minutes and the berries are again poured from the colander into the container. The mass is boiled for 3 minutes.
At the end of this procedure, the container is removed from the fire and transferred to a cool room. She stays in it for 10 hours. In this case, it is necessary to stir the jam from time to time. Then the container is put on low heat. The mass is boiled for 5 minutes and cooled again. A thick sugar syrup is added to it in a ratio of 600 g of sugar per glass of water. Then the jam is boiled until ready. Vanillin is added to add flavor to taste.
Cooked jam is cooled, and very quickly. This must be done, since at high temperatures the green color of the berries is destroyed, and the color of the jam becomes brownish-brown. You can cool the prepared mass in a bath of cold water, changing it often.
In order to preserve the natural color of the berries better, 10-12 freshly frozen cherry leaves can be added to the syrup water and boiled for several minutes. After that, the leaves should be removed, and the prescribed amount of sugar should be added to the cherry broth.
Shakin P.A.
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