Hawthorn Recipes: Protect Your Heart

Hawthorn is an essential medicine carried by almost every British herbalist. It is the protector of your most vital organ: the heart. Both flowers and berries contain Oligomeric proanthocyanadins, known to normalise heart function, strengthening heart activity without upping the heart-rate or blood-pressure. Other constituents relax the cardiac blood vessels, bringing more nutrients and oxygen to the heart muscles, helping the heart heal. It also has long traditional use for the emotional heart, especially grief.

If you have cardiac or circulatory issues, sugar in both of these recipes is no good for you, so best to see your GP as well as your local herbalist and stick to medicinal tinctures and teas!

Hawthorn flower syrup

Unlike most flower syrup recipes, avoiding boiling to keep the heart-protecting constituents alive

This means even in sterilised containers, it will not keep as long

Ingredients

• Hawthorn flowers (not leaves or twigs) – enough to pack 1L jug

• 750g granulated sugar

• 750ml water

• 2 lemons, juiced, zest grated

Directions

1. Make a syrup – melt sugar in water, bring it to a boil, high simmer for 5 minutes

2. Turn heat down to low, add lemon juice, zest and hawthorn flowers, and let it simmer very gently for further 5 minutes

3. Into sterilised heat-proof glass jar like mason jar, leave to cool over night

4. Leave it steeping in room temperature for further 48 hours, shaking twice a day (only once it is completely cool or you will burn yourself when the syrup comes shooting out of the jar!)

5. Sieve through a sterilised jam muslin, squeeze out as much of the syrup from the mixture as you can, then into a sterilised swing top bottle

6. Will keep for a few weeks in the fridge

7. To serve, dilute with water, sparkling water

8. If using alcohol, vodka/gin of your choice is a nice addition

Hawthorn berry ketchup

If this is boiled for shelf life (steps 7 and 8), not sure how much of the heart-protecting constituents survive the sterilisation procedure

For heart-protecting effect, make less, only simmer (not boil) then store in a sterilised jar, in the refrigerator and eat within 1 week

Make sure to remove the seeds from berries as they contain tiny amounts of cyanide, like apple pips (believe it or not, both hawthorn and apples are part of the Rose family)

Ingredients

• 500g hawthorn berries, pips removed – when processed freshly picked, it is easy to pinch the flesh off the berries

• 1 tablespoon ghee, coconut oil

• 2 bay leaves

• 1 yellow onion, chopped

• 1 red onion, chopped

• ½ fennel, chopped

• 1 stick celery

• 4-5 garlic cloves, crushed

• 100g apple, grated with skin on

• 250g tomatoes, roughly chopped

• 100ml apple cider vinegar

• 50ml lemon juice

• 1 cinnamon stick

• 4 whole cloves

• 4 juniper berries

• ½ teaspoon whole grain mustard

• 1 sprig fresh thyme

• ¼ teaspoon black pepper

• ½ teaspoon salt

• 100g sugar

Directions

1. Remove the pips from the hawthorn berries

2. Melt ghee or coconut oil in a skillet, add bay leaves, yellow and red onions, fennel, celery and garlic cloves, cook on low heat until onions are clear and cooked through. Once cooked through, remove the bay leaves

3. Place the onion mixture into a large pan, add hawthorn berries, apple, tomatoes, apple cider vinegar, all the spices, mustard, thyme, salt and pepper

4. Let it all simmer in low heat for 30 minutes until everything is soft and cooked through

5. Add the sugar and lemon juice, cook further 10 minutes to melt through

6. Remove the cinnamon stick, cloves, juniper berries and thyme, then blitz using a hand-blender, blender or food processor until smooth

7. Bring to a boil before placing in a sterilised jar - avoid this if trying to maintain the heart-protecting effects, but without this step, it will not last as lon (see notes above)

8. If boiled in step 7, seal as you would jams or chutney – if properly sterilised and sealed, should store in a cool pantry for up to a year

Foraging notes:

• Please forage responsibly, taking no more than 10% of any patch of plants/flowers/leaves/berries.

• Forage from area free from herb/pesticides, pollutants (e.g. heavy traffic), mindful of dog poos!

• There are poisonous and deadly plants including lookalikes, so never consume any plant unless 100% certain of what it is.