TIBT: Shrub Syrup How-To + Blackberry Rosemary Shrub Syrup Recipe
TBIT (Throw It Back Thursday) is a regular drinks and spirits column written by the one and only Chelsea Hughes. Bottoms up!
I’ll never forget the first time I encountered vinegar in an enjoyable context. I was 8 years old, on a shopping venture with my mother and sister, when my mother corralled us into the food court, forced us to remain impatiently by her side as she stood in line (“but there’s pizza over there, and chicken fingers over here!?!”), and finally handed us a steaming hot cardboard sleeve of Boardwalk Fries, drizzled with a generous helping of malt vinegar. Happy meal, step aside. These things were crispy outside but still soft within, with just enough salt to satisfy – and the glorious tart, tangy flavor of the vinegar made them indescribably addictive. Mom received an A+ in the book of magical childhood munchies, and my sister and I couldn’t stop licking our fingers.
Although my days of reveling in the majestic deliciousness of deep fried foods are long behind me, my appreciation of such a subtle, yet fundamental gastronomical ingredient is only beginning. It adds a wonderful flavor to Bolognese sauce, perfectly ties together a wholesome fruit and hearty green salad, and adds just enough tang to a gastrique. And ketchup! Who isn’t grateful for ketchup?
But let’s set food aside for a moment and talk about the beverage realm. Revered for not only its medicinal properties, but also for its knack at preservation, vinegar has been incorporated into various beverages since the 15th century. The first shrub-style concoction that made its way to the States was the result of an endeavor to preserve berries and other fruits beyond their peak season. Eventually this practice evolved into mixing vinegar with fruit, allowing the substance to soak for a few days, straining out the remaining fruit and combining it with some sort of sweetening agent before reducing it all to a delicious syrup.
I don’t consider myself an expert at many things – least of all cooking – but I do find I have a knack for culinary creativity when I feel so inspired. Combining flavors, textures, colors – this is what makes cooking the most enjoyable; having a hair-brained idea that two completely unrelated things will complement one another perfectly and then discovering my notion was correct … well, there aren’t many more satisfying feelings.
The world of the shrub is no different – it is endless – but there are fruits I’ve never heard of, much less tasted. There are herbs and roots and spices I would never envision combining with a fruit, but that no doubt someone else has, and found it produced a marvelous result. Where should I even begin?
Like most things, I decided to start simple. I wanted to dip my toes into the process and technique first before diving into the depths of potential flavor combinations. Here’s what I discovered: there are two processes used to create a shrub: the cold method and the hot. The cold method is a slower, but more natural process, in which you allow the fruit and sugar to combine over several days time. The sugar slowly extracts the moisture from the fruit and creates a beautiful syrup, which is then strained through fine mesh to separate the remaining fruit solids before being whisked together with the vinegar. The hot method, a much faster and more efficient method, combines the fruit and sugar with a small amount of water over heat until the sugar and the fruit break down to form a syrup, which is mixed with the vinegar and strained to remove the fruit solids. Either method produces a very similar and tasty result; it’s just a matter of how much time you have on your hands.
In both cases, the proportions are basically the same. 1:1 ratio of fruit and sugar, and ¾ ratio vinegar. (When using the hot method, you add the missing ¼ proportion of vinegar as water to aid in the breaking down of the fruit and sugar and to compensate for the loss of moisture due to evaporation over heat). While there are many who may disagree with me on this point, I have found that after several rounds of trial and error, I greatly prefer the fruit forward result that this ratio produces, but this is only my opinion.
For the most part, I prefer the cold method. I like to allow things to run their course naturally, and I feel it extracts a bolder and richer fruit flavor than the hot method, but my experience is still limited, and I’m not here to tell you which method is best. For the recipe I’m sharing with you today, I actually used the hot method. Mainly because I was pressed for time and am too much of a procrastinator to schedule these kinds of things in advance, but also because I have yet to experiment with the hot method, and wanted to give it a go (a likely excuse).
Blackberry Rosemary Shrub
What You’ll Need:
2 cups fresh blackberries
2 cups granulated sugar
½ cup water
2 generous sprigs of rosemary
1 cup red wine vinegar
½ cup balsamic vinegar
I began by muddling the fruit with the sugar and water and bringing it to a simmer. I spent probably a good 15 to 20 minutes stirring the mixture obsessively, watching the berries fade from black to a deep pink, and finally into liquid purple goodness.
Once it had reduced to a more syrupy consistency, I threw in the rosemary sprigs and turned off the heat.
Rosemary is such a potent herb with a very powerful flavor, and I didn’t want it to overwhelm the sweetness of the blackberries, so I just stirred the sprigs around in the syrup until the needles had wilted notably and I could smell the piney scent. Then, I mixed in my vinegars, poured it all through my fine mesh strainer, and gave it a whisk.
And voila! Sweet, tangy, berry goodness with just a note of the piney herb. Although the first thought that crossed my mind when I initially envisioned this concoction was a delightful, tangy gin cocktail, I was very sadly sans a bottle of the botanical spirit, so I opted for a refreshing, non-alcoholic summer beverage instead – and nothing beats the heat like a glass of ice cold lemonade.
Feel free to mix yours as you please, but I found that the perfect balance between too sweet and too tangy was about 1¾ oz of shrub to 12oz of lemonade.
Cheers!
-Chelsea
