How do you know when blackcurrants are ready to pick?

[Tilly2]

My blackcurrant bush has done really well this year and the currants are huge and now very black.
I have tried a couple this morning and they are still very sharp. How do I know when they're ready. I want to harvest them before the blackbirds do.

They've already had all the gooseberries.

[guilliebrougues]

If your blackcurrants are black and very large, they are ready for harvesting. Blackcurrants are sharp anyway and need a little sugar to sweeten them. I always freeze blackcurrants once i have got rid of the wooden bit at the end and remove the stalks. They are excellent in a blackcurrant pie with dark brown sugar to sweeten them. You can freeze then with added sugar or just sweeten them when you use them. Usually the balance between the blackcurrants and dark brown sugar is llb fruit to 2 tabs sugar.

[Tilly2]

Thank you. They still seem to have a largish 'wooden' bit at the end. I had some idea that you had to wait until that disappeared somehow.

[guilliebrougues]

The largesdt bit at the end will still grow if you leave the blackcurrants any longer. Once blackcurrants are firm and black you can pick them and use them. Large or small.

[dotty.]

my mum had around 12 blackcurrent bushes when we were little and we had blackcurrent pie for weeks on end, they're too sharp for me but we all ate the pie as it filled us up. now i can't stand blackcurrents, she had loads of gooseberry bushes too and it's the same with goosberries, and rhubarb, and strawberries. grew up with them every year , we lived on a farm and had a huge orchard and fruit garden, i love bananas, she never grew bananas

[Tilly2]

If she'd grown bananas you wouldn't like them now, dotty.

[BillyBB]

i leave mine until they fall off in your hand, lovely and sweet without sugar and melt in your mouth. Of course the birds will have them just before that!

[Tilly2]

Picked my blackcurrants yesterday as I saw a blackbird lurking about beneath the bush. I now have two two pound bowls full of blackcurrants. Please don't tell me I've got to pull all the little ends off before I can do anything with them. There are hundreds!

[Rose Maybud]

I love blackcurrant jam but hate the seeds, so I simmer the fruit until soft and then rub the pulp through a sieve, thus leaving the seeds and any wooden bits and bits of leaf behind. Or if any wooden bits get through, they're so small you can't see them :)

I have never tried this, but someone told me if you freeze blackcurrants, gooseberries etc, then take a few at a time and rub them together in your hands, the unwanted bits fall off. Sounds a recipe for frozen fingers to me, but perhaps if you wear two pairs of those disposable plastic gloves you could get through a couple of pounds of fruit before that happens!

[Tilly2]

I have now frozen them Rose Maybud because I didn't know what to do with them. I will try your suggestion.

I had thought of some kind of pie. What would go nicely with blackcurrants?

[rowanwitch]

When you eat them you screw your eyes up with the sharpness but your lips no longer look like a cats bum

[Tilly2]

Whose lips look like a cat's bum?

[rowanwitch]

Blackcurrants go well with apple, are really nice in a mixed berry with blueberries raspberries and strawberries

Better still,,,,

cook them in their own juice and press through a sieve to remove the seeds and skins

Strain again through some fine fabric until you have clear purple liquid then add a bottle of overproof vodka or other clear spirit gin works well too half a pound of caster sugar and stir til the sugar is dissolved pour into sterilised bottles and store for about 3 months

[rowanwitch]

its that sucking a lemon look where they go all tight and round...

[Tilly2]

That sounds lovely, Rowan, but we would never drink it.

We still have loads of bottles of alcohol from my Oh's sixtieth birthday party. They are still in the gift bags upstairs.

[Rose Maybud]

If you made bottles of blackcurrant vodka / gin, you could use them as presents for other people. They appreciate the 'home-made' bit. My neighbour does a mean sloe gin which is now sought-after commodity in the area: parties, Christmas presents, even a house-warming gift! If you used your blackcurrants, you could add them to the gin etc whole, add the sugar and strain the lot after a few months, which is what we do with the sloes. Of course you may find you don't want to give the bottles away :)

[Old_Geezer]

The birds are at them.