shrub

A tart drinking vinegar that can be made with whatever berries you have on hand. Use for spritzers, cocktails, even ice cream floats.

Huckleberry Shrub

huckleberries (about 1 cup)

sugar

white wine vinegar

club soda

Bon Appétit

Place huckleberries in a 1-qt. jar. Bring sugar and vinegar to a boil in a small saucepan, stirring to dissolve sugar.

Pour hot vinegar mixture over berries and mix with a fork, crushing berries gently to release more flavor. Seal jar and store in a cool dark place 4 days.

Strain shrub through a fine-mesh sieve lined with cheesecloth into a clean jar; cover and chill. Check shrub every week or so until vinegar flavor mellows to your liking.

For each drink, combine 3 Tbsp. shrub with 1 cup club soda in a glass filled with ice. Taste and add more shrub if you like.

Do Ahead: Shrub can be made 6 months ahead. Keep chilled.

Back in colonial days, a shrub syrup was the best way of preserving fruit without refrigeration. This autumnal cocktail gets its sweet-tart flavor from a shrub made with cranberries and spiced with black pepper. Its tangy flavor counterbalances a meal's richer flavors, and the shrub is great for parties, since it can be prepped in advance. For guests who aren't drinking booze, mix the shrub with chilled sparkling water instead of wine.

Tangy Cranberry&#8211;Black Pepper Shrub Cocktail Recipe

For the Cranberry-Black Pepper Shrub:

(approximately 10 ounces by weight) cranberries

whole black peppercorns,

apple cider vinegar

water

For the Cocktails:

chilled sparkling wine (from 2 bottles)

orange bitters

Cranberry-Black Pepper Shrub

Cranberries,

For the Cranberry-Black Pepper Shrub: In a nonreactive saucepan, combine cranberries, peppercorns, apple cider vinegar, sugar, and water. Stir to combine. Cover and place over medium-high heat. Cook, opening the lid and stirring occasionally, until sugar dissolves and some of the cranberries begin popping open, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat, uncover, and allow to cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes. Pour entire mixture into an airtight, nonreactive container. Refrigerate at least 8 and up to 12 hours. Strain mixture twice through a fine-mesh strainer, transfer to an airtight container, and refrigerate for up to one month. 

For the Cocktails: Slowly pour chilled sparkling wine into a pitcher. Add bitters and chilled cranberry-black pepper shrub. Stir very gently to mix. Serve immediately. Individual glasses can be garnished with cranberries. 

For the rum, choose something dark and, if you want to replicate the Colonial experience, something funky.

Rum Shrub Recipe

dark rum

shrub syrup

Fill a tall glass with ice. Add rum, shrub syrup, and soda. Stir gently to mix and serve immediately.

This recipe makes about 20 to 24 ounces of shrub syrup, enough to make anywhere from 10 to 20 drinks, depending on how much syrup you use per drink. Store it for up to a year in your fridge. The acid and sugar will preserve the syrup and keep it tasting bright and fresh.

Cold-Processed Shrub Recipe

berries

red wine vinegar vinegar

Place berries or fruit in bowl. Cover with sugar and stir.

Cover with plastic wrap and store in refrigerator until juice exudes from fruit and starts to combine with sugar to form syrup. This may take only 5 or 6 hours, or it may need a couple of days. A longer maceration won't harm anything, so feel free to leave it in fridge longer than it might need.

Strain syrup from fruit. Press lightly on solids to express any remaining juice/syrup. Scrape remaining sugar into syrup.

Pour through funnel into clean bottle. Cap and shake vigorously, and mark date on bottle. Store in refrigerator.

Check periodically. Some sugar may remain undissolved for up to a few days. Shake to combine. After about a week, acids in juice and vinegar should dissolve sugar entirely.

A simple  shrub recipe using rhubarb or any other fruit. Delicious added to cocktails or sparkling water. An old way of preserving the essence and flavor of fruit!

Rhubarb Shrub Recipe 

fruit

vinegar (white

Mix the rhubarb and granulated sugar in a small bowl, cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 4-5 days, stirring every 12 hours. Strain the liquid, pressing down hard on solids. Mix the rhubarb syrup with vinegar and pour into a lidded jar and refrigerate. You can use immediately, but after a week, their flavors will deepen, meld and harmonize. Add to cocktails or sparkling water.

I make this every spring and it is amazing.  Simple to make and the perfect way to preserve rhubarb from our garden.

Fantastic! I tucked a few rose geranium leaves into the rhubarb-sugar mix. Divine!

I’ve just tried this for the first time, have to be honest, when I added the vinegar I said out loud “I hope I haven’t just ruined this”! I need to thank you now though because it’s absolutely gorgeous. I can’t wait to make more and try different flavours. I don’t drink alcohol so it’s great to have another interesting, tasty option.

I've been making this constantly.  My husband and I put a little in a glass of sparkling water and call it a Rhuby Fizz. So delicious and refreshing!  Feels festive but without the alcohol. I've also discovered some delicious cocktails incorporating it.  It's a keeper!

Straining the juice from the fruit, to make my bottle of shrub, without pressing it I returned the fruit to the jar, added some ginger, covered it with gin then left it all to stand a further 4 or 5 days (shaking occasionally).  After draining, bottling and storing my flavoured gin ready to gift for Christmas, I used some of the fruit as a boozy desert.  The remainder was moved to a smaller jar with a 2% salt//water solution (with the intention of creating a fermented rhubarb).  Despite its soak in gin and addition of salt, the liquid tasted far too sweet to serve as a savoury dish, so I drained that off to make a lighter shrub, replaced the 2% solution and now have a fermented rhubarb to serve on my salads. So 1 fruit, 5 uses and no slaving over a hot stove :)

Maybe something like monk fruit sugar or another granulated sugar would work to macerate the fruit equally!

What cocktails do you recommend with this? It's so tangy and tasty!

Really simple and easy to follow recipe! I am pairing this with some lime sparkling water and it is super refreshing. I was going to add basil, but mine ended up going bad too quickly - next time!

Loved it!  Looking forward to trying cherries next!  We used the leftover sugary rhubarb for muffins and pancakes with coconut too!  So good!

Yes, this berry shrub recipe takes a couple of weeks to make—but once it’s ready, you’ll have a tart-sweet, utterly refreshing beverage whenever you want.

Any-Berry Shrub

(or more) granulated sugar

(or more) vinegar (such

Club soda (for serving)

1-qt. glass jar

Cheesecloth (optional)

There’s no summer beverage more refreshing than a puckering fruit shrub mixed with club soda over ice. There are many ways to make a shrub, but we prefer the cold-process method in which ripe berries and sugar macerate for a day until they turn into a flavorful syrup. Once you strain the fruit syrup into your jar, you can add all kinds of additional flavors to infuse your final shrub. A few to try: a 2"-piece of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced; a small bunch of basil or mint leaves, clapped to release aromas; a few sprigs of fresh rosemary or thyme; or a 3"-piece of lemongrass, tough outer layers removed, smashed. Mix the resulting fruity-sweet vinegar with club soda (and maybe tequila or gin, no one’s stopping you!) and you’ve got the makings of an instant party drink. You can drink the shrub right away, but it will taste even better after a week or so when the flavors have mellowed.

Gently mash berries in a medium bowl with a fork. Transfer to jar, add sugar, and stir to combine. Seal jar and let fruit mixture sit at room temperature, shaking a couple of times, until berries are very soft and falling apart and sugar is at least mostly dissolved, about 1 day (mixture should look very juicy).

Strain fruit mixture through a fine-mesh sieve (line sieve with a layer of cheesecloth if you want to catch every bit of seed and fruit pulp) into a medium bowl; discard fruit. Scrape any undissolved sugar left in jar into bowl.

Add vinegar to syrup and stir to combine. Taste shrub and add more sugar or vinegar to your liking—it should taste both sweet and sharp but not overpowering in either direction (keep in mind the flavors will meld as the shrub ages). Pour shrub into a clean jar; cover with lid and chill until flavors come together and mellow, at least 1 week.
Do ahead: Shrub can be made 6 months ahead. Keep chilled.

For a refreshing nonalcoholic drink, pour 2 Tbsp. shrub into a glass filled with ice and top off with club soda; stir gently to combine. Garnish with berries and/or herbs if desired.

How to Make a Shrub, a flavorful fruit-infused drinking vinegar used in cocktails, mocktails, vinaigrettes and sauces!  Allow 24 hours to sit overnight. Recipe by Tonia Schemmel

How to make a Shrub!

plums

cane sugar

shiso leaves

rice vinegar vinegar

x quart jars (or similar sized vessels, or 2 bowls)

Place whole plums (don’t bother removing the pits, as the whole mixture will get strained) and sugar in a jar and mash until juicy and mixed.  Put a lid on the jar and leave at room temperature for 24 hours.  

Roughly chop the shiso leaves and place in a jar along with the vinegar.  Put a lid on the jar and leave at room temperature for at least 24 hours or up to 1 month.

Strain the plum mixture, discarding plum pulp.  Strain the vinegar discarding the herbs.  Add about ½ of the vinegar to the plum syrup and taste.  Some kinds of vinegar are stronger than others so add more to your liking.  

If you do have leftover vinegar, it can be a beautiful component to salad dressings!

This was delightful.  I had received some  shiso from my local CSA and put it to good use.  This was good the next day also. Thanks for such a creative recipe

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Top 7 shrub recipes from across the web

The most viewed shrub recipes by Recipe Cart users, saved from over 6,000 sites. Or, go to our Recipe Search Engineic_arrow_forward_48px

Top Tags

Huckleberry Shrub

Tangy Cranberry&#8211;Black Pepper ...

Rum Shrub Recipe

Cold-Processed Shrub Recipe

Rhubarb Shrub Recipe

Any-Berry Shrub

How to make a Shrub!

The most viewed shrub recipes by Recipe Cart users, saved from over 6,000 sites. Or, go to our Recipe Search Engine

Tangy Cranberry–Black Pepper ...