Fireweed Jelly! (Recipe included)

Fireweed is everywhere in Alaska, mostly around young forests, in meadows, and on the tree line.  I never realized what it was until Saturday, when I learned about edible plants in Alaska at a church activity (there are so many!).  So of course, I get all adventurous and Marshall and I go out after lunch on Sunday to pick fireweed out by the Cushman shooting range. I am lucky to be married to a guy who enjoys picking wildflowers and berries, because it is so tedious.  It was nice to be out in the sunshine, but after an hour of fighting mosquitos, I was done.  It was a good thing we didn't stop any earlier because we had just enough flowers for our fireweed jelly!!

Fireweed Jelly has such a gorgeous, hot pink color that

is totally natural, yet looks so artificial :)

On Monday night I took the paper sacks of blossoms out of the fridge and spent the next two hours taking off the small stems from the flowers. 

I am not sure how necessary this is, except to give a more accurate measurement of the blossoms for the recipe.  Either way, I was just following the recipe. It took 2 hours to do this alone, and it was a lot faster the last 15 minutes when Marshall came in and helped :). 

The recipe was quite simple, at least after the preparation process:

Fireweed Jelly

8 cups fireweed blossoms (no stems)

1/4 cup lemon juice

4 1/2 cups water

2 packages Cero pectin

5 cups sugar

Pick, wash, and measure 8 cups of fireweed blossoms (flower parts only).  Place in a large stock pot and add lemon juice and water.  Boil for 10 minutes and then strain, catching the liquid.  Take the liquid and heat to lukewarm.  Add both packages of pectin and bring to a boil.  Add the sugar and bring to a full boil and boil hard for 1 minute.  Pour into hot clean jars and seal.  Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Remove jars from bath and place on a wire wrack to set overnight.

This made about 3 pints for me.

Next Fireweed recipe we will try?? Fireweed ice cream!!

This picture is supposed to show how swollen my

shins are from the bites I got while picking the

flowers...

It's sure a good thing the jelly is delicious!



A mosquito I smacked while I was
sorting through the blossoms. 
This really shows how big they are!