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
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
- Get a large pot.
- Add to it the washed blueberries (stems removed) and diced onion.
- Wash the oranges. Zest them and add the zest to the pot. Juice them and add the juice to the pot.
- Add to the pot everything from the vinegar down to and including pepper.
- Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, then lower to a low simmer and let simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.
- Put the lemon juice in a bowl.
- Whisk in the pectin powder all at once and then either the sugar or liquid stevia or honey, set aside.
- After the 15 minutes, stir the calcium water into the pot mixture.
- Stir in the lemon and pectin mixture. Bring back to a boil, if needed, and let boil for one minute.
- Remove from heat.
- Spoon into quarter-litre (½ US pint) jars.
- Leave 1 cm (¼ inch) headspace.
- Debubble, adjust headspace.
- Wipe jar rims.
- Put lids on.
- Process in a water bath or steam canner.
- Process jars for 10 minutes; increase time as needed for your altitude.
- Best after at least a month of jar time.
Nutrition
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.
What is the shelf life of home canned goods?
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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