Let me just start with this, I don’t trust the food industry. Most juices are made from concentrate, unless of course the label says 100% fruit juice. But I have yet to find 100% prune juice. The prune juice Jim drinks has been giving me the willies so I decided to lure him over to the homemade stuff. It worked, and now all I have to do is keep up with the demand and come next fall dry every blessed prune that grows on the tree. I seriously doubt I will have enough prunes for this year. Commercially dried prunes are soaked in sulphites so it’s debatable if using them would be an improvement over the store bought juice. So let’s just hope I have enough bottles with dried prunes on the shelves downstairs for part of the year.
The process is easy and the ingredient list is short. All you need is dried prunes, boiled water and a sweetening of choice. Oh and a blender. I sweetened mine with La Bona Vita English Toffee syrup; remember I wanted to lure him over to homemade. The following recipe makes exactly 4 cups or 1 litre of prune juice.
HOMEMADE PRUNE JUICE
1 cup pitted dried, prunes
sterilized water
3 Tbsp sweetener of choice
• Boil 5 cups of water for 5 minutes.
• Put 1 cup of dry prunes into a heat proof glass jar.
• Add enough of the boiled water to cover prunes.
• Cover the prunes and set aside the remaining water for use later.
• Let the prunes soak for 24 hours.
• Pour the prunes and the soaking liquid into a blender.
• Puree until smooth.
• Place a fine sieve over a 4 cup/1 litre measuring cup.
• Force the prune-puree though the sieve. Discard solids.
• Top up the prune-puree to 4 cups from the reserved water and stir.
• Sweeten with the sweetener of choice.
• Pour the prune juice into a sterilized jar with a well fitting lid and refrigerate.
• Homemade prune juice keeps in the refrigerator for 1 week.
