All Things Mulberry

My Pakistani mulberry tree starts producing ripe mulberries in early April.  I put a large tarp under the tree because when the berries are ripe, they fall off the tree.  The tarp makes it easier to find the berries and keeps them cleaner.  I sit down under the tree, take my shoes off, then perform what I amusingly call “Mulberry Yoga.”  I scoot, crabwalk, and roll my way around and under the tree, putting ripe berries in a bowl and the unacceptable berries in a little tub.

When the harvest starts, I get 4 to 5 pounds a day just from the tarp.  A week or so into it, the amount slows down to 4 to 5 pounds every few days, and often I shake the tree to make more berries fall.  That is what I end up getting; I cannot estimate what I lose to the birds, squirrels, bunnies, possums, raccoons, and skunks.  I don’t mind sharing with them, and the harvest is large enough that they actually share with me (unlike with my peach tree).

Pakistani mulberries are longer than a “typical” mulberry, and when they are dark purple, they are sweet and flavorful.  When they are dark, they look just like big, fat caterpillars hanging on the tree.

This is about four pounds of berries.

Forty to fifty pounds of mulberries is a lot to handle!  I decided this post would give you a sense of all the things I can do with such a beautiful and large harvest.

First and easiest, eating them fresh!  I’ll eat them right off the tree while picking and they make a great little side dish at lunch.  Fresh berries are excellent with yogurt (I like vanilla yogurt, berries, and a chocolate/coffee granola), and I think mulberries and jack cheese are a great combination (with a white wine, of course!). 

I share with friends, too.  I like to give to people who never had mulberries before; they are often surprised at the flavor.  I know that the mulberries I had as a child were Russian mulberries, which are tart and small compared to mine.  I think most of the people I give them to eat them fresh.

This year I made mulberry jam, where I cut the berries up a little and cook them in sugar with a little lemon juice until they form a syrup and thicken up.  It is not a standard jam because the fruit is bigger so it separates from the syrup more than jam.  It tastes great! I used less sugar than one usually puts into a jam, with the idea that it would be more "fruit forward."  It was, and I store it in the refrigerator to keep it fresh.  I think the next time I do this, I will chop the berries up more or maybe pulse them in the food processor.

Juicy jam.

I also started a batch of liqueur.  First, I put the berries in vodka and let them soak for a while.  Last year they soaked for 6 months before I strained them out; this year I waited two weeks.  This year, too, I used a muddler to press the berries in the jar.  This made a lot of juice, so I couldn’t fit much vodka into the jar.  Oh well, I put in what I could and tucked it away into a cupboard.  A few days later, I smelled ferment.  Sure enough, the juice and berries were bubbling away!  They smelled and tasted good but it was not what I wanted.  So, I moved the mixture into a bigger jar and added more vodka, which stopped the fermenting.

A lovely color, no?

When I strained out the berries, the mulberry-infused vodka was dark purple and the berries were mostly white – a good sign.  It tasted good, but it needed the sugar that makes it a liqueur.  Before I added the sugar, I poured in my attempt this year to make mulberry molasses.  I’ve done this in the past successfully:  basically, it is super-concentrated mulberry juice with a little lemon juice added.  But I didn’t feel I had achieved the molasses-level of reduction and the quantity was so small that I didn’t want to reduce it any further.  Then I added enough sugar to finish filling the jar.  I’ve made liqueurs for decades so I don’t really measure anything.  Now it is officially aging, which allows the flavors to blend and the sugar to dissolve.  In six months or so, I’ll taste it to see if it needs more sugar. 

Last year’s mulberry liqueur had aged for nearly 6 months, so I decanted it into a bottle.  It was wonderful!  Not an epic liqueur, but a very good one.  Smooth, just sweet enough, and a rich, fruity flavor.  The danger with such a liqueur is that it tastes so good that it is easy to consume too much in one sitting.  Sip at your own risk!

Mmmmmm.

This year I’m trying again to make mulberry wine.  Last year’s was good.  I’m not willing to call it a great wine, but it was certainly interesting.  Dry, when most people expect it to be sweet, with a mild flavor that made it clear it was not a grape wine.  One recipient thought it was excellent with a good steak.  This year I’m following the same recipe but most of my sugar was vanilla-scented.  I’m curious to see if that makes a difference in the outcome.

It sure smells good.

My experiment this year was to embed fresh berries in a lot of sugar and watch it turn into a syrup.  I took a picture every day for six days to see the changes.  What a fun and easy way to make syrup!  No cooking, just patience. 

A lot of sugar, layered with mulberries.

The view from above.

Day 1, layering is completed.

Day 2, juice is seeping into the sugar.

Day 3, more juice and it is spreading.  I shook the jar to mix it up a bit.

Day 4, look at that syrup formation!

Day 5, notice how the level has dropped?  I shook it again.

Day 6, that looks amazing.  I rolled it to mix it, too.

I was ready to add more mulberries to the jar, so I got to taste it (on Day 7).  It was unsurprisingly sweet, but I really enjoyed the strong mulberry flavor that went with it.  I added more berries, stirred it thoroughly, then put it into the refrigerator just in case it was tempted to start fermenting.  

In the past, I have made historical mulberries recipes.  One is a sort of breadcrumb pudding, called a Murrey.  You can view the recipe by clicking here.

 Another was a mulberry meatloaf, called a Red Murrey or Red Mulberry.  You can view that recipe by clicking here.  Yes, you read that right.  A mulberry-flavored meatloaf!

The other day I froze a box of mulberries knowing I want to make a cobbler in a few weeks.  

Last year I tried mixing the juice with milk, sugar, and flour, then heating it to make a thick saucelike dessert; this was a riff on an historical recipe that used cherry juice.  Unfortunately, the mulberry juice curdled the milk!  But I recovered from the blow and poured the curds and mulberry whey over sliced bread.  This was well-received and no one knew it was supposed to be different.

So there you have it.  Lots of things to do with mulberries!  I will continue to look for historical recipes that use them, with the hope I can report it on this blog.

Success!