Your Weekly Voilà: The many uses for sloe berries 😊💕🇫🇷

Celebrating the art of French style for everyday living

Picking sloe berries is slow work. Slow and steady will fill your basket. Try and channel your ancient gathering instinct. You can't rush the process because you need to be mindful of some serious dagger-like thorns. The fruit looks much like a blueberry. They're not toxic to eat. Although, one taste and you'll think, "Why waste my time on that?!" They have this sour bite at first that doesn't seem too unpleasant but quickly moves to very astringent as the fruit seems to pull all the moisture from your mouth leaving you with a severe pucker. A bit startling but not poisonous to consume.

Sloe is the fruit of the Prunus spinosa or Blackthorn. It is a species of flowering bush in the rose family. It's native to Europe and often found as a hedgerow in Great Britain. They are everywhere on the property here in southwest France. They are often harvested just after the first frost in October so to make the fruit split. But I harvest in September and pop them into the freezer for a day or two. Voilà! First frost. I'll be picking sloes well into next month.

Sloe flower, fruit, seed, and leaves illustrated by Otto Wilhelm Thomé (1885)

The flowers of the Blackthorn bush are one of the first to burst on the scene in spring. They bloom in clusters with each flower about 1.5 cm or 1/2 inch in diameter, with five creamy-white petals.

Have you heard of sloe gin? It's a liqueur made by infusing gin with sloes and sugar. Very easy and peasy to make. Pick the sloes when they are ripe - about a kilo or two's worth or 3-4 pounds. If you pick them after the first frost they will split and allow all the goodness into the liqueur. If you pick them prior to the frost, wash them, and freeze a day or so before continuing with the process.

Place the washed and frozen sloes into a large jar. Add a few cupfuls of sugar and pour over a bottle of gin. Some folks add a few cloves and a cinnamon stick. It's a personal taste. Seal the jar and shake and allow to sit in your dark pantry for 3 months or so. Shake the jar every time you remember. A couple of times each day for the first week or two. Then when you think of it. You want to shake it more at the start while the sugar is activating the process. You can use vodka as your alcohol of choice but I'm not sure that would fly in Britain.

After a few months, the liqueur turns a deep ruby color. Strain out the fruit but save it to make jam, jelly, or chutney or infuse into vinegar. There's more life in those berries than you know. After you have strained out the fruit, wash the jar, place the liquid back in and cap. Allow it to sit for another week so all the sediment settles to the bottom of the jar. Decant the liquid into a fresh bottle and you will have a beautiful clear liqueur.

In Spain, a liqueur made of sloes by the same process is called pacharán. In Italy, the liqueur is called bargnolino. In Alsace, France, the sloes or prunelles are usually fermented into a strong alcohol or eau de vie.

My sloe gin is taking on the color of the berries. Here is one month in. We'll be enjoying this delicious (hopefully) liqueur with friends come the December holidays.

If you are looking for a beautiful deep ruby pink, sloes make a wonderful natural dye or ink. The process is also easy to do but can be a bit tedious if you decided just to use the skins of the fruit for a deeper color. Pick a kilo or two of sloes, wash, and freeze for 24 hours. Place the frozen berries into a large dye pot with 3 cups of water. Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally so not to burn the fruit to the bottom of the pot. (I speak from experience here.)

Much like cooking cranberries, the sloes will start to "pop." When most of the berries are open, I take it off the stove to cool. Then I just go in and squeeze the fruit with my hands, attempting to remove only the skins into a second dye pot. I do this for a while until I give up and add the rest of the fruit to the pot and return it to the stove, heat to a low boil and simmer for an hour. You can also use a pressure cooker to speed the process.

Remember, as long as you don't add any mordant or fixative chemicals and are just cooking the sloes, you can use the same cookware as you do in your kitchen. If you add any treated material to the bath, then you have to use your "for-dye-purposes-only" pots and utensils.

After an hour or so, you will have this rich dark dye bath. Remove from heat and cool. Pass the mixture through a sieve or jelly bag (it will be forever pink) to remove the fruit. (You can save the spent fruit and use it again for a lighter colored dye bath. This berry keeps on giving before landing in the compost.) I find that without any additive, the dye works extremely well on cotton, silk, and paper. Those fibers take the color immediately. With wool, I would use a mordant of salt and/or alum so that the color remains intense after washing. If you are looking for a light pink, just allow the wool fiber or yarn to sit in the bath for an hour or even overnight and then rinse well. I have to say that I don't usually use a mordant with sloes. I'm becoming a very lazy dyer.

The color holds very well for an ink or watercolor. As a dye for fabric or yarn, mordant the fiber with alum and/or salt so to make the final product more colorfast. Silk or cotton needs no mordant for this dye bath.

When you work with natural dyes you connect with nature and become curious as to where you might find your next color.

You can see that the wool yarn lost much of the color when rinsed. The cotton binding tape took the color fast - just two minutes in the bath - and held all the color after being washed. I think some dyed emboiderery floss is in my future this weekend. Follow me on Instagram @livingafrenchlife to see what comes out of my sloe berry dye pot this weekend.

The last thing I make from my sloe berries is jam or jelly. I usually wait until the first frost to pick because I think this is when the berries are at their sweetest if you can consider a sloe berry sweet. The fruit will hang strong until November, so this task can wait until I get around to it. I also gather together any sloes that I had leftover from another food recipe from the prior month. I'm looking for about 2 kilos or 4 pounds of sloes to 600 ml or 1 pint of water to 2 kilos of sugar. For almost every confiture I make, I use the same amount of sugar to fruit. Every time. Wash the ripe fruit and cook with the water for about 40 minutes. Again, a pressure cooker makes it much faster on high for 5 minutes.

Since I love the color, I usually make sloe jelly. I pour the liquid into a jelly bag and allow it to drip through overnight. The next day I add the sugar, perhaps a bit of lemon juice, to the berry juice and boil for 40-60 minutes. You're looking for the jelly to set on the spoon. I don't use any pectin for this recipe but if you prefer, allow the liquid and pectin to come to a boil and cook for 10 minutes. From there, you know what to do: Decant into sterilized jars and seal.

If I do make sloe jam, I "cheat" and add blackberries to it. I still strain the sloes completely; I don't want any pits or skins in my finished jam. I cook the blackberries with sloe fruit juice and sugar and continue as you would with any jam recipe.

Blackthorn is truly an amazing plant. The bush is beautiful in early spring as the flowers bloom prior to the leaves. The bees are ecstatic. Blackthorn makes excellent slow-burning firewood. Good heat and little smoke. The wood takes a fine polish and has long been used in France and I'm sure across the world for tool handles and canes. I saw straight blackthorn stems made into beautiful walking sticks when I visited Ireland. And when in a pinch, I hear the leaves make a fair substitute for tea. Good to know.

One last thing . . . Blackthorn is very easy to propagate. The seeds or pits sprout in just about any soil medium and are ready to go out as small plants after the danger of frost has passed in spring. I highly recommend you add Blackthorn to your property's perimeter. But beware of those thorns . . . They'll catch you by surprise - but only once ;)

Time to take a walk this weekend and see what you can forage for either your jam or dye pot or better yet . . . maybe make a liqueur to share this December.

À bientôt mon amie,
Karen 😊💕🇫🇷