Making Your Own Fermented Berry Sauce

With summer winding down, we are often finding ourselves surrounded by fruits and vegetables that need to be used up. The farmer’s markets are overflowing and perhaps our own backyard is giving up its own abundance. There are many ways to preserve berries. Processing berries at home has a few distinct advantages. For one, you get to control the ingredients. Starting with organic berries is crucial and a huge improvement over most store-bought conventional jams and spreads. Beyond making jam from your organically-sourced fruit, fruit sauce is another option. We are familiar with applesauce which is made by cooking peeled apples down into a thick sauce-like consistency. This can then be canned and stored away for winter. This fermented fruit sauce is different from the familiar applesauce in that it is raw, never cooked, and imbued with a starter culture which adds enzymes and probiotics. So, the nutrients of the berries are left intact when they might otherwise be lost in the cooking process, and the naturally occurring bacteria, enzymes, and vitamins in the berries are allowed to proliferate through the fermentation process.