I have 4 mulberry trees in my backyard, and I have always just enjoyed them by thee handful. My dogs also enjoy them, picking them for themselves from the low hanging branches.
Just today I decided to see if there are any sort of recipes, and googled. I did find some that look interesting; I am going to be making a mulberry cobbler later this afternoon. Most were for jams & jellies, something I have no interest (or skill! ) in doing.
Have any of you ever cooked with mulberries? Care to share recipes?
Heretic!
You don’t cook with mulberries; you stand under the trees in your bare feet, eating them right off the trees (hey, God gave me an immune system, I may as well use it!) until your feet and your lips are completely black!
Related (amusing) story: when we were growing up, we visited my aunt in Baltimore a lot. There was a big Victorian house across the street from hers; the lawn was completely bordered by mulberry trees. For some reason, my mother didn’t like my sister and I over there (we didn’t go on the other family’s property, just stood in the street and picked the low-hanging berries), so she told us (in hopes of grossing us out, I guess) that we shouldn’t eat mulberries because mulberry juice is what ink is made of. Well, that logic worked on me, but my sister, who was a million times more daring, went off in search of a bottle of ink and drank it, to see if it tasted like mulberry juice!
Agreed. It’s not that they taste good (mostly, they’re just generically sweet), it’s that they’re fun to eat. This is even more true when your mulberry tree is a great climbing tree, as ours was. Mulberries were always one of the harbingers of summer when I was growing up: It wasn’t officially summer until I’d eaten mulberries.
One place you really don’t want a mulberry tree, though, is right over your driveway. Trust me on this.
There was a big mulberry tree with particularly sweet, juicy fruit that stood at the far end of my elementary school’s schoolyard. When I was in second grade, my future third-grade teacher (a short, owlish woman with a huge, booming smoker’s voice that she wasn’t at all afraid to use - I was then terrified of her, although we got along quite well once she was my teacher) ‘caught’ me eating mulberries and bawled me out for doing so. When I protested that I’d eat them from that very tree with my mother, she told me that I could poison myself on my mother’s time, but not on hers. She also got angry at me earlier that spring when I taught everybody how to drink that drop of nectar at the base of the honeysuckle flowers that grew along the playground fence.
Oh yeah… I know. That’s how I’ve eaten mulberries for most of my 50 years. I just wanted someting different today, and the cobbler is DELISH!! Very simple too… you could use any fruit. It’s actually called an upside down cobbler- the fruit is on top. I’d be happy to share the recipe if anyone wants it.
I haven’t eaten mulberries in years and years! There was a great big one in the small town where I grew up, and we’d all climb it and eat all day long. One time I got a bunch of kids to help me pick enough for jam and made a batch. The only thing I remember about it is that it was hard to get rid of all the stems.
But oh the memories of mulberries. I wish I knew where a tree was right now!
As Chronos said, they’re mostly generically sweet. They do mix well with more tart fruit though. Try mulberry-cherry pie, mulberry-rhubarb cobbler (you’ll likely have to use frozen rhubarb since the seasons differ) or mulberry-strawberry topping for ice cream or pound cake.
When my daughter was in middle school, I had to drive her back and forth to the school. There were a couple of very busy streets that were unsafe for adults to cross, let alone a little girl, so I drove her. On the way home, there was a big mulberry tree in a vacant field. I got into the habit of taking a big bowl and a big towel in the car with me on the afternoon trip, and I’d stop the car, let Lisa out with the bowl, and she’d happily pick and eat mulberries, and fill the bowl. I’d read a book. The towel was in case she got too juicy. Later that evening, we all enjoyed mulberries for dessert.
Hey, it was better than stopping every afternoon for a shave ice. And cheaper, too.
Many years ago, I worked as a private nurse on a dead-end street in a small town near Annapolis, MD. Right next to the property I worked at, there was a number of mulberry trees. The berries would fall off the tree and ferment, and pigeons would eat the fermented berries. A few times a summer, I’d have to stop my car in the middle of the street and pick up a drunk pigeon and move it to the side of the road so it didn’t get run over!
I’m in southern Indiana, and yeah, they pop up pretty frequently. I didn’t actually PLANT any of my 4 trees- my neighbor had one many years ago and the seeds made their way (via bird, most likely) to my yard. 1 tree became 2, 2 became 4. I keep the rest cut down!
Strange. My parents told me 70 years ago that mulberries were poisonous and apparently other parents in my neighborhood (in Massachusetts) must have told their children the same thing because, although there were mulberry trees all over the neighborhood, I don’t recall a single instance of any kids eating them.
LOL… I used to ccome home wwith stained hands from eating them, and my mother would be positively horror-struck- “Don’t EVER eat those, they are poisonous!”
Well… I’m almost 50 and have been eating them for most of my life. Just had a piece of mulberry cobbler for breakfast in fact.
So… if they are poisonous, it’s a very S-L-O-W acting poison.
Freeze 'em and wait til July. Then make a cobbler out of them and fresh, seasonal peaches. Heaven.
Also, mulberries are a plant that thrives on abuse. If you ruthlessly hack them back, and let them resprout (and they will, enthusiastically and defiantly), they will produce 100x times the amount of fruit.
OK, now that sounds good! I adore peach Melba, which combines peaches with raspberries, so I can’t imagine not loving peaches with mulberries! Problem: I don’t know where I’d get mulberries around here!
) in doing.
