Chokeberry or chokeberry - a berry brought to Europe in the 18th century from North America. It began to be planted in Russia, first for decorative purposes, and already in the 20th century, chokeberry was widely used as a fruit and medicinal plant. The shiny black fruits of this tall shrub, juicy and tart in taste, contain a storehouse of vitamins; they can be dried and frozen for the winter, make stewed fruit, preserves, jams, while maintaining their healing properties.
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Useful properties of chokeberry and their application
In addition to the fact that aronia has a refined and unusual taste, it also has healing properties. It contains a large number of vitamins, trace elements and other beneficial substances.
The use of fresh chokeberry in the form of juice, juice and other homemade preparations is useful for diabetes, with an excess of cholesterol, hypertension. Chokeberry has a therapeutic effect in case of anemia, lowered immunity, and some vascular diseases, accompanied by increased permeability and fragility of blood vessels.
With the undoubted benefits of chokeberry, it is not recommended to use it in its pure form and its products to hypotensive patients and people suffering from a stomach ulcer and (or) duodenal ulcer, as well as gastritis with high acidity.
This plant is unpretentious, withstands winter well, resistant to various pests and grows well on any soil, so they like to plant it in gardens. The chokeberry is collected in the fall, keeping up to frost, then it is especially tasty.
It is good to harvest dried or dried fruits of chokeberry for the winter. You can dry them simply by sprinkling them in a layer, or in the oven at a temperature not exceeding 60 ° C.
If the fruits are properly dried, their color will turn cherry red. If the berries become brown or red-brown, this means that vitamin P has decomposed and the fruits will not have a medicinal effect.
Juice can be prepared from chokeberry with or without pulp, boiling it at 60 ° C for 20 minutes until the berries soften. Then the berries need to be crushed, and if the pulp is not needed, squeeze the thicken through cheesecloth. When boiled, then 100 g of water is added per 1 kg of berries. For sweet juice, first the berries are covered with sugar at the rate of 1.5 kg of sugar per 1 kg of fruit, and then they do the same. Naturally, before any procedure, the berries are cleaned of twigs, sorted and washed. It is necessary to adhere to the specified temperature in order to preserve the vitamins and healing properties of the plant.