What do you do with a mulberry bush?

When we first moved into our house, I knew the trees in our backyard looked funny. Once their leaves came in, a quick Google session revealed that they were prime examples of the famed mulberry bush.



Remember the song? Turns out they are real, and plentiful in our neighborhood. They also produce tons of mulberries. I hate to see anything go to waste, so when the trees were thick with berries by mid-May, I set out to determine what to do with a mulberry bush.


Mulberries aren't great for eating, because they're not that sweet. They are, however, great for jams and jellies. We don't eat much jelly, but I figured this would be a good learning experience, and if it was horrible, no big loss. I found a simple-looking recipe, which I chose primarily because it didn't require pectin. I don't have any pectin on hand.
It took a while to pick the mulberries required. I quit before I got the full quart, so I cut the recipe in half and just used the two cups I was able to reach from my ladder without getting too close to poison ivy sprouts. I'm just getting over a bout of ivy, so I played it safe.
They're good-looking berries, like slightly elongated blackberries. There were a lot of bugs in the tree, and I managed to bring a few in with me on the berries, so  I put the berries in a strainer and rinsed them off.


Next came the hardest part of the whole process: de-stemming all the berries. It was slow going, and left my fingers a matching hue of purple. Turns out mulberries have been used to make dyes. I can see how that would work out well. 

Next I had to soak the berries in a salt water solution. Not sure why that is required-- need to look it up. After another quick rinse, I just mashed up the berries with a submersible hand blender (messy!) and added the cinnamon, sugar, lemon juice, and nutmeg.
Then it's just a rolling boil for a few minutes (until it reaches the "jelling point", whatever that is), and dump it into a jar. I used a funnel to make it a little easier.
Technically this recipe should be canned, but I don't have a canner or any appropriate jars and lids, so I just put it in an old jar we've had sitting around and figured I'd use it before it has a chance to go bad. At least a week, right? After 24 hours in the refrigerator, the jam seemed to be the right consistency.

It's not really toast-and-jam season, but we had some biscuits left over from some recent strawberry shortcake, so I convinced my wife to put together a mulberry shortcake. It was actually quite good. The cinnamon gives the jam a slightly spicy taste, underneath all that sugar of course.
Overall, I'm calling this a success. Worth the time, probably worth making a bigger batch and then canning in a few small jars. Maybe next year.