It’s almost saskatoon season here in this part of Canada and it can be a bit of a game of chance if we’re going to have an overabundant harvest or nothing at all. It’s always a race to harvest the saskataoons on our bush before the birds do, but the birds are much more efficient than I am.
I distinctly remember one Saturday evening a couple years ago where the saskatoons were near perfect ripeness and I said to myself “I’ll harvest these tomorrow morning before the birds get to them.” When I went out with my harvesting bowl a mere 18 hours later, the bush had been stripped bare of saskatoons and we had a grand harvest of about half a cup. (The year before this, we had harvested somewhere around six litres.)
If I’m particularly determined to enjoy saskatoons and the birds have beaten me to it, there are parks nearby with plenty of saskatoon bushes that I could raid. These berries tend to be smaller than the ones I have here, but they’re just as delicious and just as abundant.
On a year where we get a small harvest, we don’t bother with figuring out how to preserve or cook or use the berries—we just pull them out as a snack at a barbecue. But on those years where we get six litres or more, we need a list of recipes so that we make the most of those saskatoons!
From my understanding, saskatoons are more of a regional name for these berries. Depending on where you are, you may know these as juneberries or serviceberries. When looking for recipes online, you’ll likely have better search results using these other more common names.
Baking recipes
While I don’t tend to bake with saskatoons, I think it would be fair to say that most people’s first thought of what to do with saskatoons is to make pie or other baked goods—so let’s start with some of these!
Saskatoon pie
It’s very likely every Canadian prairie family has their own variation on the traditional Saskatoon pie. This is my step-dad’s recipe, which makes two pies:
Crust ingredients:
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2/3 cups margarine or shortening
- 1 large egg
- 1 tablespoon vinegar
Crust instructions:
- Knead flour and margarine to make a fairly dry and loose crumble.
- Add egg and vinegar and knead until it forms a stiff dough. Add a splash of water if needed to keep the dough rollable and workable.
- Divide into two parts and roll out two bottoms and two tops.
Pie ingredients:
- 8 cups saskatoons, cleaned and stemmed
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
Pie instructions:
- Place bottom crusts in two 9-inch pie plates and trim edges.
- Place 4 cups berries in each pie.
- Mix flour, sugar, and cinnamon and pour half of mixture over each pie. Sprinkle a tablespoon of lemon juice over the berries in each pie.
- Moisten the rims of the crusts. Place top crust on each pie and crimp-seal around the edges, trimming off excess. Make a small hole in the top of the crust to allow steam to escape.
- Bake at 350 F for 45 minutes or until pie looks done.
- Serve as-is or with ice cream.
More baked goods
In my searching for recipes I stumbled upon this great site with a whole list of saskatoon berry baked goods, including biscuits, breads, turnover, and more.
Preserving recipes
As this blog likely indicates, I’m a fan of preserving food so we can enjoy it throughout the year. There are, unfortunately, surprisingly few saskatoon preservation recipes, but I’ve got a couple to get you started.
Preserving saskatoons in kombucha
This is a recipe of my own invention and it turned out remarkably well.
A few years back I had started exploring fermentation methods of preserving blueberries, attempting both a salt fermentation and a kombucha fermentation.
After succeeding with that—and liking the kombucha fermentation better—I decided to try the same with saskatoons. And, thankfully, it worked! With this kombucha fermentation, I was able to keep delicious saskatoons in my fridge for weeks, impressing my saskatoon-loving family members who thought the season was long gone.
You can find my recipe for kombucha-fermented saskatoons here.
Saskatoon jam
Perhaps the most common home preservation choice when it comes to saskatoons is to make jam.
The Bernardin website has a great recipe for saskatoon jam, found here.
Alcohol recipes
One of my favourite garden produce projects is to turn food into alcohol. At any given time I have anywhere from four to eight different types of wines stocked away and a few different liqueurs. When we have guests over, this makes for a very impressive (and delicious) accompaniment to dinner.
Saskatoon wine
Last year I attempted my first batch of Saskatoon wine using this recipe.
It turned out very delicious, but my main learning from the project was to wait until fermentation fully stops rather than following directions to the letter. I had bottled the wine when directed, but fermentation hadn’t finished and had continued while in the bottle. Upon opening, two of our bottles gushed upward like a geyser, even striking the ceiling once. It was a mess to clean up. (In hindsight, I could have used a Campden tablet to cease fermentation before bottling, but I generally don’t use them.)
It’s a recipe I will make again and once I’ve mastered it (and perhaps tweaked it a bit), I’ll have a version here on the website.
Saskatoon liqueur
On the same site I’ve already linked to twice in this post, I also came across a saskatoon liqueur recipe that could be described as saskatoon schnapps. You can find that recipe here.
If I can manage to get the saskatoons before the birds this year and have a large harvest, I’ll give this a try too!
More food preserving recipes
If you haven’t already checked out my new cookbook, Preserving Your Urban Harvest, please do so! It includes 73 recipes to preserve 21 garden favourite crops, including saskatoons!
Each produce has two to four recipes, to help get your started on your food preservation and urban homesteading journey. The saskatoon section includes the above kombucha-fermented saskatoons and a saskatoon and Grand Marnier jam.
