What else to do with a bumper crop of plums?

August 16, 2013 2:52 PM

Near our house, we found a delightful Damson plum tree, that's busting at the branches. We picked too many. I need your best preserving/canning/fermenting plans that can use up the rest of these.

We got a little carried away. Probably picked about 125lbs of plums. They're incredibly tasty. We've used a bunch, and given away a bunch, but I still have a 5 gallon bucket left over.

What we've already done:
2, five gallon batches of plum wine
24 half pints of plum jam
2 quarts of halved, frozen buddies
1 gallon of plum infused vodka

What else can we make out of this silly amount of plums?

posted by furnace.heart to Food & Drink (12 answers total)

Best answer: Damson gin. Same as the vodka!
posted by Swisstine at 3:02 PM on August 16, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Anyone around with an apple or pear tree who'd be willing to trade harvests? If not, turn 'em into prunes.
posted by jquinby at 3:09 PM on August 16, 2013

Best answer: if you have an ice cream maker, or know someone who does, David Lebovitz's plum ice cream is amazing.
posted by dizziest at 3:46 PM on August 16, 2013

Best answer: Pickle or chutney. And oh, I'm jealous.
posted by holgate at 4:34 PM on August 16, 2013

Response by poster: Holgate, if you're in or near Southeast Portland, you're welcome to some, and I can show you where there are loads more
posted by furnace.heart at 5:03 PM on August 16, 2013

Best answer: Plum butter. It's like plum jam, but cooked down much further, so it uses probably twice as many plums per cup. It's also wonderfully rich and delicious. You don't have to add the spices if you don't want to. I would quadruple to plums in that recipe, but only double the sugar.
posted by Adridne at 5:06 PM on August 16, 2013

Best answer: When Mom would get desperate with the end of the plums, she would just stew them with sugar and freeze them. The results are less flexible-use than the frozen halves, but less labor-intense than the jam. Other odds and ends of inconvenient fruit might get mixed in.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:55 PM on August 16, 2013

Best answer: Ok, this isn't going to be super helpful in terms of using up lots of fruit, but Dorie Greenspan's dimply plum cake (which seems to be a variant on one of any number of plum-topped cakes) has got to be one of the best things that has ever come out of my kitchen. I make it every year, with damson plums if I can find them. If you find yourself needing something easy, baked, and awesome, make that.
posted by quaking fajita at 5:59 PM on August 16, 2013

Those odd bits and pieces could also be turned into chutney. Mother Earth News just did a whole bit on canning chutney.
posted by jquinby at 6:40 PM on August 16, 2013

Best answer: Fruit leather? My mum made some once out of a bushel of plums - basically just stoned, stewed, spread on cling-film on cookie sheets and put in the oven at a super-low temperature for many hours - and it was amazing, tart and chewy and leathery... so good. I haven't had anything like it since.
posted by Flashman at 8:28 PM on August 16, 2013

Best answer: I made a bunch of plum syrup this year and it's wonderful-makes great soda. Having access to a steam juicer helped amazingly.
posted by purenitrous at 1:45 AM on August 17, 2013

We canned some plum bbq sauce a few years ago that was pretty great. I don't have our recipe handy, but Google shows a lot of variations.
posted by maurice at 1:58 AM on August 18, 2013