Saskatoons
So many people have told me that they have never tasted Saskatoons. To me, that’s both sad and incredible at the same time. I’ve been picking and eating Saskatoons since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Growing up on the Canadian prairies, Saskatoons were plentiful, free and completely organic. As one of six children to a Mother in a wheelchair, it was a mandatory chore to spend a day or two every August picking Saskatoons. Mom would sit in the car picking through and cleaning the berries as we six kids would pick and drop berries into old ice cream buckets or tin cans. Mom would fashion picking buckets out of cans and wire that we would fill as we made our way through the Saskatoon patch. One for the bucket and one for the mouth until I couldn’t eat another berry. Once home at the end of a long picking day, the berries needed to be processed. This usually meant canning them in syrup or freezing them. Saskatoons can be eaten straight out of the jar, they make a nice jam and an incredible Saskatoon pie. You will find my Saskatoon pie recipe on the site. My sister-in-law, Pam, once told me it was the best pie she had ever eaten🥧.
Saskatoons
makes 7 quarts (Litre) or 14x pints (500 mL) jars
Ingredients
7 pounds fresh Saskatoons
7 cups sugar
14 cups water
Directions
Add 6 inches of water to the canner and heat to a simmer. Heat 7 clean quart jars in the canner. Prepare lids by placing SNAP LIDS® in a bowl of warm water. Keep both jars are lids warm until ready to fill.
Raw pack fresh Saskatoons evenly between 7 hot jars.
Bring water and sugar to a boil in a saucepan, stirring to ensure that all of the sugar is dissolved. Boil gently for 5 minutes.
Ladle hot syrup over berries, leaving ½ inch (1 cm) headspace.
Clean the jar rims, centre hot metal lid on jar rim, place screw band on top. Tighten to finger-tip tight.
Place jar in boiling water canner. Repeat with all the jars.
Add enough boiling water to the canner to cover the jars with 1” (2 cm) of water. Once water returns to a boil, process for 15 minutes for quarts and 10 minutes for pints, adjusting for altitude.
Tip: Berries to syrup ratio is not an exact science. You may be short or over on the syrup. If you need more syrup, make more. If you have more than you need, try using it in your homemade lemonade.
If you want to be as exact as possible when preparing the syrup, follow these directions: fill a clean jar to the bottom of the rim with Saskatoons in the jar. Next, add cold water to fill the jar to within ½ inch from the top. Now pour that water into a measuring cup to determine how much water you need per jar. Multiply that amount by the number of jars you will be processing. The same goes for the Saskatoons.
*Altitude adjustment for boiling water method
Altitude in feet Increase processing time by
1001 to 3000 5 minutes
3001 to 6000 10 minutes
6001 to 8000 15 minutes
8001 to 10000 20 minutes
