How to store feijoa
The green and oblong feijoa berry loves a subtropical climate, therefore it is rightfully considered exotic. Its place of birth is South America, but today it grows in the Caucasus and southern regions of Russia.
The diameter of feijoa does not exceed 7 centimeters, and its weight is 120 grams. The ripe fruit is juicy and pleasantly sour. It is more beneficial to consume feijoa in its entirety, since the peel contains many useful substances.
The berries ripen from October to the end of autumn. It is during this period that you can enjoy fresh fruits and make small preparations.
How to choose feijoa for storage
To fully discover the taste of feijoa, you need to choose ripe berries. An unripe fruit will arrive at room temperature in a few days, but will significantly lose its usefulness. The most nutritious feijoas are those that have matured on the tree.
When choosing berries you need to pay attention to the following features:
- Feijoa color. A ripe fruit has a dark green skin without individual bright spots. The surface of the berry is wrinkled and matte, and the flesh is transparent. If the inside of the fruit is brown, it is overripe. The white flesh indicates that the feijoa is still unripe.
- There should be no dark spots or brown streaks on the skin. If they appear, it means that the feijoa has been lying around for too long and has already begun to deteriorate.
- The berries are not picked from the tree, but collected from the ground. Ripe feijoas fall off on their own. Therefore, you should not choose those fruits that have a stalk. This means that they were cut before they were ripe.
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How to choose fruit for storage
We never focus on the size of feijoas. There are many different varieties. There are small and large berries. We only try to choose approximately identical specimens. We will store. Therefore, we pass by soft, ripe, overripe feijoa with dark spots. We need berries that are slightly greenish or of moderate ripeness with a dense, elastic surface. Small wrinkles are allowed.
Other selection criteria:
- uniform green color. Green specimens have light spots. Overripe feijoa darkens;
- transparent pulp. You'll have to cut it. Dense milky-green core - this is a green feijoa, it makes no sense to buy or store. Overripe berries have a brownish core;
- no stalks. Only unripe feijoa has tails. Specimens that have reached readiness are easy to part with.
What method do you use to prepare feijoa?
JamDrying
You cannot store feijoa for a long time at room temperature. It's better to put it in the refrigerator and freeze it. Or we prepare healthy sweets, jam with sugar, honey. The shelf life will increase to 1-2 years.
Live jam - a way to preserve feijoa
Since feijoa can be stored for about a week, it is worth making jam from ripe berries. If you make it “live”, that is, do not cook the fruits, you will get a product in which most of the nutrients will be preserved. But the sourness that is present in fresh feijoas will no longer be there.
You need to prepare “live” jam in the following sequence:
- Grind the clean fruits with a blender or meat grinder.
- Transfer the puree to a larger container, add sugar and stir. The amount of sugar depends on the degree of love for sweets. And also, the more of it, the longer the feijoa will last. For one kg of sugar berries, add from 700 grams to 1.5 kg.
- The mixture must be stirred periodically so that the crystals of the sweet ingredient are completely dissolved.
The finished jam should be placed in a clean glass container and closed.
Feijoa will keep in this form in the refrigerator for up to three months. Glass containers can also be placed in the pantry. But the room should be dark, cool and dry.
Sugar can be replaced with honey, which is a good natural preservative. In this case, the taste of feijoa will be perfectly complemented by nuts (except peanuts).
The color of the jam will gradually turn from green to brown. This is explained by the action of pigments secreted by the seeds.
Long-term storage of feijoa
Feijoa can neither be dried nor frozen. Therefore, you can preserve it for as long as possible only by making jam.
It is better not to use overripe fruits for this purpose. Cooked with sugar, they can upset the digestive process.
Making jam is not difficult. The main thing is to maintain the proportions: for one kilogram of berries you will need the same amount of sugar and 0.25 liters of water. The easiest way to prepare it is this:
- The berries are crushed in a blender or passed through a meat grinder.
- Sugar dissolves in boiling water.
- The puree is transferred to syrup and stirred with a wooden spoon.
- After boiling, the mixture is cooked for up to ten minutes. Any foam that appears must be removed.
- The finished sweet mass should be carefully poured into jars and sealed as usual.
The shelf life of feijoa in the form of jam is almost a year. The jars are placed in the pantry or refrigerator.
It is wise to buy feijoa during the ripening season. It is during this period that they are filled with useful components. To extend the shelf life of feijoas, you need to grind them with sugar or make jam. Then, for a whole year until the new harvest, you can delight yourself with the pleasant taste of exotic berries.
The berries ripen from October to the end of autumn. It is during this period that you can enjoy fresh fruits and make small preparations.
Recipes with feijoa for storage
It is difficult to consume large quantities of berries at once. Therefore, preparations are made during the season. They will delight you with taste and benefits for a long time. Plus it's much easier to store. We offer three popular recipes. Cooking will not take much time.
Mashed berries with sugar
It is most convenient to store the berries with sugar. We offer a recipe for the simplest delicacy. It tastes like strawberry jam. Can be consumed in its natural form, added to desserts, porridges, mixed with dairy products, such as cottage cheese. We will cook it raw to preserve the maximum amount of nutrients.
Ingredients:
- 0.5 kg sugar;
- 0.5 kg feijoa;
- 1 tbsp. l. lemon juice.
Cooking instructions:
- Wash and dry the berries. Then cut it into several pieces. There is no need to remove the skin.
- Pass it through a meat grinder. It is allowed to grind by other methods.
- Add granulated sugar and stir. Let it dissolve for 2-3 hours. Or beat well with a blender and crush all the grains.
- Sterilize jars over steam. Or we heat it in the oven, sometimes we use a microwave. We process nylon covers.
- We pack the pureed jam into sterile containers, put on clean lids, and put them in the refrigerator. Can be stored for up to a year.
Harvesting feijoa in ground form
The crushed mixture can be frozen for the winter. In this case, we recommend reducing the amount of granulated sugar by at least half. Freezing at a temperature no higher than -15 degrees will help preserve fresh taste and up to 90% of nutrients.
You can add crushed lemon to the pureed mass or add grated zest. Citrus definitely won’t spoil the treat. On the contrary, it is easier to store with acid.
Jam
The advantage of jam is that less sugar is used. It is easier to store for a long time. There are also disadvantages. The amount of useful substances is significantly reduced when boiling. We try not to cook for a long time. We offer a simple five-minute recipe.
Ingredients:
- 1 kg feijoa;
- 0.7 kg granulated sugar.
Cooking instructions:
- Cut the feijoa into small cubes, slices, pieces of any shape. Add sugar, cover, and put in the refrigerator overnight.
- In the morning, bring to a boil, boil for 5 minutes. Let cool.
- After cooling, boil again for five minutes. Let cool.
- We boil it for the last time, pour the boiling mass into jars, and close it.
When cooking, we strongly recommend skimming off the foam. It reduces the quality of jam, collects small debris, and shortens shelf life. Rolled jam, if kept sterile, stands well in the cellar and can be stored in the cellar for up to two years.
Feijoa with honey
Honey can be used instead of sugar. It turns out to be a real cure for colds, a delicacy to boost immunity, and an incredibly healthy dessert for tea. We use fresh honey from the last extraction. A candied product will no longer work.
Ingredients:
- 0.7 kg feijoa;
- 0.5 kg of honey.
Sometimes additional lemon, ginger, and cinnamon are added. There is a recipe with walnuts. It must be pre-fried and dried in the oven.
Cooking instructions:
- Grind feijoa in any convenient way.
- Transfer to a bowl. Add honey. If necessary, add additional ingredients.
- Stir, pack into jars, put on tight lids.
- Keep refrigerated.
Don't forget about the allergenicity of honey. We give this delicacy to children with extreme caution. If a reaction occurs in the form of a rash, redness of the skin, or cough, it is necessary to urgently remove the product from the diet.
Feijoa berry: beneficial properties and how to eat it
Overseas delicacies and fruits have long ceased to be a curiosity for us, and have firmly taken their place in our diet. The grocery market stalls are replete with a variety of exotic fruits, sellers vying with each other to praise their fruits, but not every one of us knows how to choose these fruits correctly and what the beneficial properties of feijoa are. In this article we will look at the miraculous properties of this exotic berry.
Feijoa is a tropical plant whose historical homeland is South America. However, even in the pre-war years, it was brought to Transcaucasia, and successfully took root there. The fruits found on our market are Crimean berries and imported from neighboring countries: Azerbaijan, Georgia, the North Caucasus. Ripe feijoa fruits are dark green in color and have a mixed smell of strawberry and pineapple and a sour-sweet jelly pulp.
History and description
- Feijoa began to spread in European countries in 1890 thanks to Dr. Edouard Andre, who brought it to France. Then they began to grow the plant everywhere - in Yalta and Sukhumi, then in the USA (California), Italy.
- From the Mediterranean it moved to Southeast Asia. Feijoa has taken root in colder subtropical regions due to its frost resistance - the tree can adapt to low temperatures - down to -12 degrees Celsius.
- Today, feijoa is grown in the countries of the Caucasus, Latin America, Southeast Asia, on the Black Sea coast, in the Mediterranean countries and even in Australia.
A small genus of feijoa belongs to the Myrtaceae family. The family includes plants of 3 species, but mainly only the already mentioned feijoa Zello is grown in cultivation.
What does feijoa look like?
Feijoa is an evergreen shrub with tree-like stems. It can reach 4 m in height.
The root system is highly branched and is located in the upper layers of the soil, since the plant prefers good moisture. The edge of the leaf blade is entire, and the oval leaves themselves are covered with small hairs.
They are located opposite each other, are quite hard to the touch and are attached to stems and branches using petioles. The front side of the leaf plate is green, and the back is silver. The bark covering the trunk is brown with a greenish tint, rough.
Feijoa berries are quite large (from 3 to 5 cm, less often - 7 cm), juicy with an indescribable smell of the sea. Their taste is reminiscent of pineapple, kiwi, and to some, strawberries. The fruit weighs approximately 50-70 grams and is shaped like a ball, sometimes elongated.
The seeds are in the pulp. They are surrounded by white pulp. The fruit is protected from external influences by a hard, uneven skin, which acquires various shades of green.
The plant is bisexual. Blooms in late spring - early summer. Axillary flowers can be located either singly or in inflorescences. There are quite a lot of stamens - more than fifty, and pollination occurs thanks to insects.
In another article we discussed the Physalis plant.
Feijoa can ripen at home
Unripe berries are selected for transportation, so you can often find these berries in an unripe form on our shelves. That is why many, having tried such a berry once, do not buy it again, believing that this fruit is not suitable for food. And few people know that having bought such a berry, it must be given time to ripen, and only after the fruits become soft to the touch can they be eaten. Despite this artificial ripening of feijoa, its beneficial properties, according to experts, are not lost and are fully preserved.
How to store feijoa at home until spring
Fragrant feijoas appear on the shelves in late autumn - during their ripening season. Exotic lovers feast on them for only a couple of months, and then wait a year for a new harvest. But if you know how to store feijoa correctly, then you can stock up on vitamins until spring.
Feijoa is eaten fresh, compotes and jams are made from the fruit, and even cosmetic masks are made. These fruits are low in calories and at the same time rich in nutrients. Thanks to the excess of ascorbic acid and B vitamins, as well as iodine, they are good for colds and vitamin deficiency.
Storing feijoa in the freezer
Freezing is one of the simple and popular approaches to storing fruits and berries. This unusual tropical berry is no exception. It is recommended to freeze exotic fruits in portions, in small containers or freezer bags (so as not to re-freeze the leftovers later). These fruits should be thawed as needed, immediately before consumption.
You can freeze the berries either whole or in the form of a puree; to do this, the pulp is rolled through a meat grinder or crushed using a blender. An important point is that the crushed pulp of an exotic fruit quickly loses its nutritional value.
Therefore, it is necessary to take fresh crushed pulp for packaging as soon as possible, even before it turns brown as a result of oxidation.
Before storing whole feijoas in the freezer, each fruit must be wiped with a damp cleaning cloth. It is believed that washing reduces the quality of exotic fruits. Fruits should be placed in paper bags or plastic food storage containers.
How to store feijoa at home
As a rule, fruits are sold unripe - they are collected long before ripening, so as not to be beaten during transportation. But the greatest benefit comes from ripe fruits. They are distinguished from ripe ones by the excessive hardness of the peel and the white rather than creamy shade of the pulp.
How to store feijoa until ripe.
— Place the fruits on a sheet of paper in a well-ventilated area.
— The air temperature should be 22 degrees and above.
— We periodically check the fruit for areas of rotting.
In about a week and a half, the fruits will be ripe. If you want to preserve unripe feijoas longer, you should put them in the refrigerator - in the fruit compartment. There they may well wait even until spring.
Overripe fruits - soft, damaged, with brown flesh - should not be purchased. Fermentation processes have already begun in them, which makes them almost inedible. Ripe feijoas are stored for no more than three days.
To preserve the aromatic feijoa longer, you can make jam from the fruit. But it’s even better to make live jam: it retains the largest amount of useful substances.
For cooking you will need feijoa and sugar in equal proportions. If you like a more sour taste, you can use a third less sugar. The healthy delicacy is prepared simply:
- wash the fruits, remove the stalks;
- turn into puree using a blender or meat grinder;
- add sugar and mix thoroughly;
— put the “live jam” into sterilized jars and close the lids.
This delicacy can be stored in the refrigerator until spring. It will acquire a brownish tint, but this will not deprive it of its beneficial properties.
Regular feijoa jams are prepared in the traditional way, just like, for example, those made from plums. Simple jam also retains valuable substances, but in smaller quantities due to heat treatment. But the jam can be stored for a whole year.
For cooking you will need feijoa and sugar in equal proportions. If you like a more sour taste, you can use a third less sugar. The healthy delicacy is prepared simply:
Feijoa jam
Speaking about how to store feijoa, it is necessary to mention jam. This method of harvesting significantly increases the shelf life of the fruit, while allowing it to retain most of its beneficial properties.
For cooking you will need 1 kg of exotic fruits. They should first be washed, dried and cut into halves. The pulp is taken out of these halves with a teaspoon and mixed with 1 kilogram of sugar. The mixture should be left for 20 minutes. After this, squeeze the juice of one lemon into the resulting mass, from which the zest is first removed.
How to eat feijoa correctly, how to choose, clean, store and what to cook
Feijoas, unusually aromatic and slightly sour, are considered record holders for iodine content. Every second Russian is experiencing a deficiency of the substance, but not everyone is ready to make up for the deficiency with boring and rather specific seaweed or expensive varieties of sea fish. Slightly tart jam, a candied mixture of feijoa with nuts or honey, a warm decoction of ground fruits with water - there are incredibly many options for tasty and healthy vitamin supplements. All that remains is to find out: how to choose feijoa, and how to eat these tropical delicious berries.
Feijoa is an evergreen plant that loves subtropical climates.
What can you cook from feijoa?
Feijoa can be consumed not only fresh; it makes very tasty cold jam, which can be an excellent dessert or cream for baking, compote and tea leaves.
A simple recipe for feijoa jam without cooking
Grind the berries into a pulp in a blender, take feijoa with the peel so that there are more beneficial properties.
Mix the resulting pulp with sugar 1:1 and store the resulting dessert in a cold place.
The advantage of such a dessert is that without heat treatment we can preserve the maximum of nutrients and get delicious jam without cooking. Boiling will be an excellent filling, addition to cottage cheese and dessert for tea.
Feijoa tea
Speaking of tea, you can make a super fortified drink from it. To do this, you need to cut the feijoa peel into slices, dry it and add it little by little with your regular tea leaves. The tea will be tasty and healthy.
How to choose the right feijoa
Before telling the rules for choosing a fruit, it is worth mentioning the amazing composition of feijoa. The berries contain some fruit sucrose - about 12%, about 3% pectin, vitamin C and as much as 3 mg of water-soluble iodine compounds. At the same time, the fruits have a delicate pineapple-strawberry taste, and eating them, unlike many foods rich in iodine, is a pleasure.
The feijoa season begins in October, when the first harvest of fruits is harvested in the subtropics. In markets and stores in our country, they are sold and eaten from about November, and sales often continue throughout the winter. The cost of a kilogram of fruit is quite affordable - about 200 rubles, so everyone can afford to prepare a couple of jars of tasty medicine. All that remains is to find out how to choose ripe feijoa so that all the fruits go into use.
The selection rules are simple:
- Only ripe fruits are beneficial, although they are harvested slightly unripe. Feijoas, like bananas, have the ability to ripen after harvest during transportation or storage. They can be safely eaten a month after harvest.
- The best fruits are large (about 10 cm in length), elastic, do not sag under your fingers and keep their shape; Before you buy a berry, feel it.
- The skin should be smooth, without stains, black spots, or abrasions. It’s especially bad if there are already a lot of black spots: this means that the fruit is damaged by pests or is overripe and spoiled.
- There is no need to be afraid of fruits that are too hard - usually they ripen perfectly after picking at room temperature (but not under the scorching sun, as the fruits will spoil before they have time to fill with juices).
- How to make sure that the fruit is not overripe? Very simple. Again, feel the fruit and do not take those that are soft, like cotton wool. However, if the batch of purchased fruits turns out to be overripe, feijoas can be twisted or cooked into delicious jam.
Conscientious sellers do not regret cutting the feijoa into two parts before selling it to customers. The cut flesh is clearly visible. Transparent, slightly creamy in the light - a sign of a ripe fruit. White indicates that the fruit still has to ripen; it is better to eat it a little later. Brown pulp is evidence of an overripe fruit; this should be left on the shelf. It is usually difficult to find overripe fruits in stores, because feijoas are harvested unripe.
The last important selection criterion is the skin. In the right berries, it is always dense, green, glossy, reminiscent of thick skin, slightly lubricated with oil.
By the way, you can also eat the skin. Moreover, it is already very useful. But the taste will obviously be an acquired taste, since the skin is slightly astringent.
Benefits and uses of fruits
Feijoa berries are quite acidic.
- The pulp contains a lot of vitamin C, pectin, amino acids, fiber, as well as water-soluble iodine compounds.
- Alternative medicine uses feijoa fruits in the treatment of the thyroid gland, atherosclerosis, pyelonephritis, and skin diseases.
There are no contraindications to eating feijoa. Moreover, it does not even cause allergies.
Use in cooking
Feijoa is a delicacy, it is consumed both raw with sugar and dishes are prepared from it - compotes, jams, juices, jams. Confectioners prepare fillings for desserts, cakes, and candies from the pulp of the fruit.
Feijoa fruits are collected unripe; they ripen later during storage. Soft feijoas are ready to eat, while hard feijoas still need to ripen in a warm, dark place.
Feijoa can be stored in the refrigerator for no more than one week, then it loses its beneficial properties. Sometimes it is frozen, or crushed with sugar and stored in jars. In this form, feijoa can be stored in the refrigerator much longer.
How to eat feijoa correctly
Many people choose the best way to eat feijoa and eat it as they like: some prefer it with the skin, others refuse it, carefully peeling it off before each meal. Let us note how feijoa is eaten in Europe (where there is now a fashionable boom for everything natural) - they eat the fruit exclusively with the skin, cutting it into a salad along with cherry tomatoes, cabbage, and cucumbers. The skin has a specific tart taste, but it does not scare off true gourmets at all. In Russia, they consider it necessary to pre-clean the fruit, so it’s worth learning how to do everything carefully, without damaging the valuable and delicate filling.
How to clean feijoa
Peeling the fruit is quite simple. The fruit, washed under running water, is dried with a towel, and then the skin is cut off with a sharp vegetable peeler or knife in a circle, like a regular potato. Feijoas do not need to be crushed when peeling so that all the juices remain inside the fruit. The finished and clean fruit should be eaten immediately or prepared for future use: feijoa is perfectly stored, especially when frozen or ground.
Features and storage methods
Many housewives do not know how to store feijoa at home. Whereas this science is not at all complicated. Healthy mixtures with nuts and dried fruits are prepared from feijoa, ground with lemon, and a little honey or nuts are added to the grated mass - the result is a version of Academician Amosov’s paste, incredibly beneficial for the cardiovascular system. Although you can simply freeze feijoa, and then cook the jam for five minutes, brew the berries with tea, or simply pour boiled water over them and drink a fragrant drink with pieces of aromatic berry pulp. Doctors recommend eating 2-3 tablespoons a day, especially during the flu and cold season. Feijoa preparations do not require culinary skills; even children can handle them.
How to freeze
The best way to store feijoa is to freeze it, because after defrosting such fruits will not lose their taste, they will retain all the vitamins intact, and you can eat them immediately.
At home, you should pay attention to the preparation of feijoa - damaged, spoiled fruits will only spoil the taste of the frozen mixture.
In order to freeze feijoas, they are washed, the “butts” are cut off, minced through a meat grinder, and then the fruit smoothie is laid out on trays and placed in the freezer, taken out as needed.
It's very easy to freeze whole fruits. The berries are also washed, dried, the tails are cut off and placed in bags. In the freezer, feijoas turn into pebbles, which, if necessary, are taken out, defrosted, rubbed with sugar or honey and eaten. There is only one downside to this method of storing feijoa - fruit “pebbles” take up quite a lot of space in the freezer, and a spacious tray is required.
Preparation with sugar
Many housewives do not split hairs, but act very simply - rub the feijoa with sugar, and then put the fruits in glass jars and store them in the refrigerator for several weeks in a row. The recipe is simple: sort out the dried fruits, cut off the skin with a vegetable peeler, pass through a meat grinder (or grind in a blender). Then add sugar to the grated fruits in a 1:1 ratio. All that remains is to prepare the jars as for regular jam. You can sterilize them in boiling water or simply clean them with soda and then dry them.
Place the mixture in small jars and place in the refrigerator. Rest assured, feijoa fruits in this form will retain their taste fresh for several weeks in a row; you can safely eat them without fear of digestive system failure. If desired, pies are filled with the sugar-fruit mixture, fruit drinks are made with it, or simply eaten, flavoring ice cream. Creamy ice cream with a spicy, slightly strawberry-tasting feijoa syrup combines perfectly. This is a real delicacy, unusual and healthy.
Feijoa jam
For jam, experienced housewives advise taking fruits of different sizes, but of the same density. This way the consistency of the jam will be uniform, and the taste of the finished dish will only benefit.
It is worth choosing elastic feijoa fruits with soft, slightly elastic cream-colored pulp. The preparation remains the same - we wash the berries, grind the pulp through a meat grinder and mix with sugar in equal 1:1 proportions. It is better to remove the seeds first - they will interfere with the jam. All that remains is to place the fruits with sugar in a large copper or enamel pan, add half a glass of clean water and bring to a boil.
After the fruit mixture has simmered for 5 minutes, turn off the stove and leave the jam to infuse. It is better to remove the feijoa foam with a slotted spoon (and then eat this delicate mousse with tea).
Unlike preparations that do not require cooking, it is better to preserve fruit jam immediately by rolling it using the traditional method. But such a preparation is stored until the next harvest, of course, in a cool, dark place.
There is another interesting recipe, popular among famous chefs. This is caramel feijoa jam, which is loved in the best restaurants in the world. Its highlight is a spoonful of cognac, which the craftswomen add to the fruit during the cooking process. The alcohol evaporates, leaving a subtle caramel note that smoothes out the astringency of the feijoa fruit.
How to preserve feijoa for the winter
To prepare exotic fruits, you need to freeze feijoa for the winter or make jam from it. Both options allow you to preserve most of the nutrients and not degrade the taste of the fruit.
Freezing
The easiest and fastest way to prepare for the winter is to freeze feijoas whole. This option is popular because it allows you to enjoy delicious and healthy fruits at any time of the year.
Freezing stages:
- The fruits are wiped with a damp cloth. However, it is not recommended to wash them with water, as this will shorten the shelf life.
- Prepared fruits are placed in paper bags. An alternative could be a plastic container designed for storing various berries.
- The container is placed in the freezer.
This way you can store healthy fruits for 6-8 months.
Feijoa recipe pureed with sugar
One of the most popular ways to prepare the South American fruit is to grind it with sugar. The finished product can be rolled into jars or stored in the freezer.
Step by step recipe:
- Ripe fruits (500 g) are washed and dried to remove moisture.
- Then they are cut in half.
- The green skin is not cut off, as it contains many useful substances.
- The prepared gifts of nature are placed in a blender bowl. If it is not there, then you can use an ordinary meat grinder.
- The device is turned on at maximum power and the contents of the bowl are ground until smooth.
- Add 500 g of granulated sugar to the resulting mass.
- The products are mixed until the bulk ingredient is dissolved.
- The mixture is poured into jars.
- The containers are rolled up or covered with nylon lids.
- The delicacy is put away in the cellar or refrigerator.
Feijoa recipe with honey
The combination of these products allows you to get a fortified product that will help you avoid colds during the cold season. The finished delicacy is not only tasty, but also aromatic.
The preparation of fresh vitamin mixture is carried out according to the following algorithm:
- Approximately 0.5 kg of feijoa is washed and cut into small pieces.
- Lemon is peeled and seeds removed.
- The remaining pulp is crushed.
- Both products are converted into a homogeneous mass using a blender.
- To make the dish less sour, add 200 g of natural honey.
- The aromatic mixture is distributed into pre-prepared jars.
- Cover the glass container with a lid and put it in the refrigerator. The delicacy can be stored there for no more than 3 months.
Feijoa jam
If you don’t want to store whole fruits in the refrigerator, you can make aromatic jam from them. It will have an original taste and a pleasant light sourness.
Preparation procedure:
- Exotic fruits (1 kg) are washed, dried from moisture and cut into 2 parts.
- Using a teaspoon, scoop out the pulp.
- It is mixed with 1 kg of granulated sugar and left for 20 minutes.
- During this time, remove the zest from 1 lemon.
- The citrus is cut in half and the juice is squeezed out of it.
- Add feijoa pulp with sugar, finely grated lemon zest and juice to the pan.
- The products are poured with 200 ml of water.
- Place the container on low heat and gradually bring to a boil. In this case, you need to constantly stir the future jam so that it does not burn, and also remove the resulting foam from the surface.
- After 10 minutes of cooking, the finished product is distributed into jars.
- Cover the containers with a lid and place in the oven for 20 minutes, preheated to a temperature of 120ºC.
- Remove the jars and let the jam brew for 5 minutes.
- After this, the sweet delicacy is rolled up, cooled to room temperature and stored in the pantry.
Feijoa caramel jam
This recipe allows you to get not only aromatic, but beautiful jam. The finished product is perfect for a holiday tea party.
Correct sequence of actions:
- The fruits are washed and dried for 1 hour.
- After this, the pulp is removed from them.
- To prevent it from darkening, it is filled with water mixed with lemon juice.
- Pour ½ tbsp into a heated frying pan. Sahara.
- As soon as it starts to caramelize, add 500 ml of water.
- The feijoa peel is placed into the resulting mixture.
- The products are cooked for 7 minutes over low heat.
- After this, add the fruit pulp and the remaining ½ tbsp. Sahara.
- Bring the jam to a boil and cook for 35 minutes.
- 30 seconds before removing from the stove, add 1 tsp. ground ginger and 1 tbsp. l. cognac
- The finished product is transferred to jars.
- The containers are rolled up and stored in a cool place.
You can store feijoa at home only if you follow all the rules. If you do not make mistakes, the harvested fruit will become an indispensable source of vitamins during the cold season.
How to eat feijoa correctly and can it be stored?
Feijoa is an oval green berry. It smells and tastes like both kiwi and strawberry. Some people think that feijoa still has the taste of banana and even pineapple.
However, in order to fully enjoy this taste, you need to eat exclusively ripe berries.
The problem is that ripe feijoas become too soft. It is for this reason that they are easy to damage or spoil. Therefore, you can often see unripe berries on the shelves.
To preserve the positive properties of feijoas, buy them hard and leave them to ripen. Remember, the riper the fruit, the healthier it is.
Feijoa skin has a tart taste and is very dense to the touch. The fruit pulp is juicy and quite fleshy. By the way, you can use both. However, most people prefer to eat only the pulp, completely forgetting that it contains much less nutrients than the peel.
If you don’t want to eat the bitter peel, you can dry it and add it little by little to tea.
Feijoas usually begin to ripen in early October. This ripening lasts almost until December. For this reason, the berry is so popular in countries where temperate climates prevail. After all, it is there that at this time the first frosts are already setting in, and fresh fruits are gradually beginning to fade.
How to choose?
The most important rule: the more, the better. Large feijoas are more mature, because they hung on the branches longer. Such berries have already acquired the necessary amount of vitamins and useful elements.
Examine the feijoa carefully. The color should be uniform. Various stains and bruises indicate that the fruit has been lying on the counter for too long. Do not take these under any circumstances!
Ripe feijoa smells like sweet pineapples. But even if you smell the fruit and do not detect this smell, do not be upset. Typically, such fruits are brought to the store unripe. These fruits just need to sit a little longer.
How to eat feijoa correctly
You can eat this fruit either separately or as part of a dish. If you decide to eat feijoa just like that, cut it in half and carefully scoop out the pulp with a teaspoon.
If you decide to cook something interesting and unusual, then you will have to tinker. Take the required amount of feijoa, remove the thick skin, grate the fruit or cut into small cubes.
Feijoa is eaten with its peel, although it is not particularly tasty, but it is very healthy. The peel contains a huge amount of phenolic compounds. Not all people like the feeling of something astringent in their mouth, but it can be dealt with. Just peel the feijoa, dry the skin and brew it with any tea.
By the way, you can add feijoa pulp almost anywhere: to salads, jam, jelly, jam, as well as various baked goods. You can even make a sauce for some meat dish with this fruit!
How to store feijoa?
Usually unripe feijoas are brought to the store. They do this in a similar way so as not to damage the fruit during transportation. However, if you are lucky enough to find a ripe fruit, remember that it can only be stored in the refrigerator. And the sooner you eat it, the better.
If the feijoa is still hard, you need to wait until it is ripe. And not just wait, but create optimal conditions for ripening. First of all, you need to remember that the fruits are stored in a well-ventilated room. In this case, the air temperature should not exceed 20 degrees. In such conditions, feijoa should ripen in a couple of weeks.
Some people make jam or preserves from the fruit. This is a wonderful solution, because in this form the feijoa will definitely not spoil for another whole winter! Moreover, the beneficial properties and taste will remain the same as those of fresh ripe fruits.
After some time, the color of the jam may turn from green to brown. Don't be alarmed, this is due to the pigmentation of the seeds.
Video: harvesting and storing feijoa
Many lovers of the exotic feijoa fruit are interested in issues of processing and storage. This plant is a resident of the subtropics. But in Russia, feijoa is also grown in the south. Russians can purchase the fruits in the fall, somewhere in October-November.
The fruits are very tasty; their aroma contains notes of strawberry, kiwi, and pineapple. Unfortunately, fresh feijoa does not last long and requires processing. Fruit lovers know how to make preserves, jams, and compotes from fruits. But they are often interested in the question of whether it is possible to freeze feijoa for the winter in the refrigerator. If yes, then how to do it correctly.
What are the benefits of feijoa for the body?
This fruit contains a huge amount of various vitamins and beneficial elements. The fruits contain fats and proteins that are easily absorbed by the body. It is for this reason that feijoa is considered an excellent dietary product. By eating it, you can replenish vitamin deficiencies and lose weight!
Feijoa is a unique plant of its kind. It contains even more iodine than any seafood! This element is in a water-soluble state, so it is quickly absorbed by the body.
Doctors often recommend eating feijoa to people who have problems with the thyroid gland. This fruit will be a good snack for those who constantly face mental stress. Feijoa is used in the treatment of the following diseases: gastritis, gout, atherosclerosis, pyelonephritis.
The skin of this exotic fruit contains leukoanthocin and kakhetin. These substances are strong antioxidants. They help prevent the occurrence of cancer.
The essential oils contained in feijoa are often used to cure colds. For prevention, you can consume the fruits in the form of jam diluted with warm water.
About the beneficial properties of the fruit
We will try to answer the question posed, but first let’s find out why fruits are useful.
The fruit contains a large number of various vitamins, macro- and microelements, organic substances, and essential oils. Experts say that feijoa contains almost the entire periodic table. In a word, a real storehouse of health. But the most important thing, perhaps, is vitamin C and iodine. Fruits are compared to seafood in terms of iodine content.
Attention! Most of this element is found in feijoas growing near the sea.
Nutritionists also highly value feijoas and recommend them as a dietary food, as well as for preventive and therapeutic purposes:
- for problems with the thyroid gland;
- for inflammatory processes of the gastrointestinal tract and gastritis;
- with atherosclerosis and vitamin deficiency;
- with hypovitaminosis and pyelonephritis;
- gout, as well as during the cold season.
Doctors advise people who constantly experience mental stress to consume feijoa.
Important! Eating feijoa berries helps strengthen the immune system.
Feijoa has another unique property - allergic reactions to it practically do not occur. Therefore, feijoa can be consumed at any age. Even women in an interesting position and while breastfeeding can safely include them in their diet.
About the benefits of the fruit:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNqjKajyfBQ&w=560&h=315]
Since the fruits are so healthy, and their presence on shelves is limited to a few months, the question arises of how to preserve aromatic fruits in winter. There are many options:
- grind the fruits with sugar;
- make jam without cooking;
- make jams, compotes.
But our readers are interested in whether it is possible to freeze fruits, and how to do it better.