This recipe for home-canned Spiced Blueberry and Onion Sauce makes a truly, delicious, savoury fruit sauce.
European cooking used to have a lot more savoury fruit sauces like this (pre-1500s), so it’s a real blast from the past. A splodge of it really does go great on a dinner plate, and may just give cranberry sauce a bit of a long-overdue run for its money next Christmas.
The first year, you’ll make one tentative batch: the second year, you’ll be doubling and tripling the batch, for presents.
You can make this with sugar, or honey, or you can make it sugar-free.
The recipe
If you wish to adjust batch size, do the math first on paper.
Jar size choices: 125 ml (½ cup / 4 oz) OR quarter-litre (½ US pint / 250 ml / 8 oz)
Processing method: Water bath or steam canning
Yield: 4 x quarter-litre (½ US pint) jars
Headspace: 1 cm (¼ inch)
Processing time: 10 minutes
Spiced Blueberry and Onion Sauce
Yield: 4 x quarter-litre (½ US pint) jars
Ingredients
- 700 g blueberries (About 5 cups. 1 ½ lbs)
- 125 g onion (diced. ¾ cup, 4 ½ oz in weight)
- 2 oranges (medium)
- 175 ml white vinegar (5% or higher. ¾ cup, 6 oz)
- 2 tablespoons ginger (freshly-grated)
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon mustard seed
- ¼ teaspoon cinnamon (ground)
- ¼ teaspoon cloves (ground)
- ¼ teaspoon cardamom (ground)
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 teaspoons Pomona pectin
- 200 g sugar (white. 1 cup / 8 oz. Other choices in Recipe Notes.)
- 2 teaspoons calcium water
Instructions
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Get a large pot.
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Add to it the washed blueberries (stems removed) and diced onion.
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Wash the oranges. Zest them and add the zest to the pot. Juice them and add the juice to the pot.
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Add to the pot everything from the vinegar down to and including pepper.
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Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, then lower to a low simmer and let simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.
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Put the lemon juice in a bowl.
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Whisk in the pectin powder all at once and then either the sugar or liquid stevia or honey, set aside.
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After the 15 minutes, stir the calcium water into the pot mixture.
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Stir in the lemon and pectin mixture. Bring back to a boil, if needed, and let boil for one minute.
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Remove from heat.
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Spoon into quarter-litre (½ US pint) jars.
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Leave 1 cm (¼ inch) headspace.
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Debubble, adjust headspace.
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Wipe jar rims.
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Put lids on.
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Process in a water bath or steam canner.
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Process jars for 10 minutes; increase time as needed for your altitude.
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Best after at least a month of jar time.
Reference information
How to water bath process.
How to steam can.
When water-bath canning or steam canning, you must adjust the processing time for your altitude.
Australia and New Zealand vinegar strength special notes.
Recipe notes
- You can dice the onion in the food processor with the pulse button, if you like.
- For the ginger, you can just use 2 tablespoons of minced ginger from a tube or jar. You can also use 1 ½ teaspoons ground ginger instead.
- Instead of the salt, you can use a non-bitter, non-clouding salt sub. We have found Herbamare Sodium-Free performs well in that regard.
- You can reduce the sugar, or use the same volume amount of granulated Splenda®, or 125 ml honey (½ cup / 4 oz), or 1 teaspoon of liquid stevia. For stevia, we’d recommend Better Stevia liquid stevia . For further sweetener choices (agave etc) contact Pomona directly.
Recipe source
Duffy, Allison Carroll. Preserving with Pomona’s Pectin. Beverly, MA: Fair Winds Press. 2013. Page 138.
Nutrition information
Regular version with sugar and salt
Per 2 tablespoons:
- 35 calories and 36 mg sodium
Sugar and salt-free version
Per 2 tablespoons:
- 17 calories and 5 mg sodium.
* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com
* Better Stevia ® is a registered trademark of the NOW Foods Company.
* Herbamare ® is a registered trademark of the A. Vogel Corporation.
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