Fermentation Adventures – Elderberry Capers – Part I

I have to start this blog post off with sharing that this idea was completely inspired by Pascal Baudar, who the Viking in my life told me about.  Pascal is an amazing forager, fermenter, author, and possibly many other things that I am not aware of just yet.  At the bottom of this blog post, I am going to share all the ways that you can follow Pascal and a link to his books that he is authored, so that you can learn from him as well as he shares his knowledge freely, his books are so handy to have as a reference and he also offers classes!

As you all know we love to garden, make wine, ferment, but haven’t had tons of opportunities for foraging, but we do have quite a bit of elderberry on our lil’ suburban homestead.   We currently have elderberry wine fermenting, and we are not too far away from harvesting another crop of elderberries.   As a result, when I saw Pascal’s post, I immediately knew we must try to make these elderberry capers immediately.  And fortunately for me, I have grown quite fond of capers and love to put them in salads, on top of deviled eggs, bagels, etc..

What is a caper actually?

I had never thought about it before, but what is a caper actually?  Well, it’s an edible flower bud, as it is shared on Wikipedia and so it’s not so strange to use an unripe elderberry as a substitute. Elderberries thrive on our coastal North Carolina property and currently we have at least a half dozen healthy elderberry trees/shrubs and they produce a lot of edible items such as flowers, berries, and now capers!

The Process of Making Elderberry Capers

Note that this is the first part of making elderberry capers with unripe elderberries and it’s the first ferment.  Also note, we never follow instructions for any recipe exactly, so fingers crossed.

Capers Made With Unripe Elderberries – Fermentation Part 1

Ingredients:

• 5.3 oz. green elderberries
• 3 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon sauerkraut juice (we used kimchi juice)
• 1 teaspoon real maple syrup

Instructions:

• Remove the unripe berries from the stalks and wash in cold water
• Make sure to remove all the stems
• In a bowl, mix the berries with the salt
• Add the kimchi or sauerkraut juice
• Add the maple syrup
• Stir all together and transfer into a 1/2 pint jar for 3 to 5 days and put a lid on it
• Burp the jar if necessary to release the fermentation gases each day, but Pascal has shared that the fermentation is fairly minimal

Part 2 is coming soon!

Now time for me to share all about Pascal Baudar, who inspired this recipe.  Pascal has authored our favorite book on fermentation, titled, Wildcrafted Fermentation:  Exploring , Transforming and Preserving the Wild Flavors of your Local Terroir. Make sure to check it out.  Note, I have not included any affiliate links in this post, I just want to make sure you connect with his great content, if you are so inclined.  You also can follow Pascal on Facebook.  I hope you enjoy his posts as much as we do!

I was so excited to try this and can’t wait to eat our elderberry capers!

They look a tiny bit like early peas in this photograph.

What do you think?

Would you give this a try?

I wish you all a beautiful week and a wonderful 4th of July holiday in the United States…until next time!

Fondly,