Prepare Fruit Syrups With Peels, Stems, and Seeds Without Boiling
When it comes to fruit, it is meat that people want, but it often clings to the stems, bones and rind, and you lose flavor by throwing those pieces. Luckily for us, Sweet Queen Stella Parks has a solution: use this alleged scraps to make bright syrups without boiling.
Parks has made delicious syrups with lemon zest , mango pits and peels , pineapple piths and – more recently – cherry pits . Although she has recipes for the amount (and seasoning!), You can make syrup with almost any amount of stems, peels, and pits, sprinkling sugar over half their weight. You let this situation last for at least three, preferably 24 hours, and then strain through a (non-reactive) fine mesh strainer. Add syrup to smoothies (or seltzer), drizzle over ice cream, or serve with plenty of fresh fruit.
Apart from Park’s brilliant recipes, this works with just about any fruit. Just last night while enjoying a delicious strawberry and cream platter, I decided to try this juicy red fruit trick and tossed the seven stalks I had with just enough sugar to cover them. Unsurprisingly, it worked even without any measure. The sugar pulled the juice out of the fruit hanging around the stem, which in turn dissolved the remaining pellets. The result is a pale pink sweet strawberry syrup that I ate this morning with cottage cheese (and lots of strawberries). Excited about the results, I cut off the stems from the leftover strawberries, just to make more syrup, which I probably water all these pancakes with , to be honest.