Lingon berry sauce how to#

The fruit can then be refrigerated for up to three weeks, or canned, frozen, or dried. Each bush yields a pound and half (0.5 kg.) of vitamin C-rich berries. Plants are picked with a scrabbler, a wide fork-like tool that strips the berries from the bush. Once planted, a little patience needs to be exercised, as the shrubs do not begin to produce for 2-3 years after. The first crop is ready to harvest in July and the second in October. The cultivated European lingonberries blossom in the spring and again in midsummer. The sweetness tames the bitterness but doesn’t completely obliterate it, leaving you with something sublime much like how cranberry sauce and turkey go well together. As with cranberries, lingonberries combined with sugar are something else. The berries are attractive and tantalizing looking, but eaten raw, are very bitter. Growing lingonberries can be found wild in Sweden in woodlands and moorlands. Leaves of the lingonberry are shiny on a low-growing, evergreen shrub that reaches from 12-18 inches (30.5-45.5 cm.) high and 18 inches (45.5 cm.) across. The European lingonberry has bigger berries that are produced twice in a growing season. Native species of lingonberry bear an annual crop of small, red berries that taste much like cranberries. They are a close relative of the cranberry and blueberry. Lingonberries ( Vaccinum vitas-idaea) are also referred to as cowberries, mountain or lowbush cranberries, red bilberries, or whortleberries. Lingonberries are commonly used in Swedish food and are considered to be a crucial accompaniment to many Swedish dishes such as potato pancakes, Swedish meatballs, and stuffed cabbage rolls.

Lingon berry sauce how to#

The following article is filled with lingonberry information, including how to grow your own lingonberries at home. If you don’t have friends of Scandinavian descent, you may be wondering, “What are lingonberries?”. I live in an area of the United States that is rife with folks of Scandinavian origin, so I know a thing or two about lingonberries.