Instant Pot Schisandra Syrup

When we bought our first house, I was so excited to start a garden and plant a bunch of fruits and berries that we could enjoy for years to come. I had just finished my nutritional therapy training, and I was super ambitious to grow a large garden of medicinal herbs. Many things were short term projects, like annuals herbs and vegetables, while others like fruiting bushes and trees often take years to reap the rewards.

One of the plants that took years was schisandra. Schisandra chinensis is native to Northern China and is a vining plant, in some cases growing up to 30 feet long. The type I have grows up to 8 feet long and is self-fertile, though many varieties require a male and female plant. After it flowers, as shown in these pictures, it produces small bright red berries that are amazingly complex. They are often called the five-flavor fruit because they are thought to posses all five flavors of salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and pungent contained in each tiny berry.

After years of growing schisandra from a little tiny vine, last year, my vine finally produced fruit! I had almost given up hope on this one after it didn’t produce fruit in its third year, but its fourth was worth the wait! Last fall the vines were loaded with berries and I was waiting for them to ripen when the birds swooped in and ate most of the berries, leaving me with about a cup of berries.

Once I harvested the berries and began to use them here and there, I got really excited about schisandra’s health benefits again and starting working on various recipes using it.

What is schisandra?

Schisandra is an adaptogenic herb, meaning it has energizing effects on the body. It can help the body adjust to both emotional and physical stress. In traditional Chinese medicine schisandra is used to support mood, immune function, and endurance.

The berries can be used to make teas, preserves, juice, and syrup. Schisandra is rich in vitamin C and has anti-viral, anti-inflammatory, and cardio-protective effects.

Where to get schisandra?

Schisandra is available dried from online herb shops like Mountain Rose Herbs and locally here in Portland, it can be purchased from herb shops like Clary Sage Herbarium. I paid $5.70 per ounce and used just under 4 ounces to make this recipe.

Why make syrup?

Boiling schisandra berries in water is a great way to extract their nutrients. When this extracted tea is mixed with honey, not only does it make it sweet and more palatable, it also helps preserve it so that it can last longer. The serving size for the syrup is 1 tablespoon, 1 to 3 times per day. Making over 2 cups of syrup, this recipe provides over 32 servings. It can be stored for up about 3 months in the refrigerator in an airtight container.

How to make schisandra syrup

To make schisandra syrup, first you must extract the juice from the dried berries. To do that, you are going to heat them with water until they are softened and tender. In this recipe I used the Instant Pot because I like to set it and not have to pay attention. If you are making this on the stovetop, simply increase the cooking time to about 45 minutes, and add about 1/2 cup more water to start with. In the Instant Pot, you just combine the dried berries and water, close and lock the lid, and press Manual and set the time for 15 minutes on high pressure.

Once it is done cooking, it will look like this picture below. The berries are all swollen and the water goes from clear to a kind of dirty red color. Now it is ready to be strained to separate the liquid from the solids. Any type of fine mesh strainer will do a great job with this.

To strain the juice, pour the juice and spoon the pulp into a fine mesh strainer set over a bowl and make sure you press it really well with the back of a spoon to extract as much juice as possible. The berries should be pretty much mush once you extract all the juice from them; throw the pulp away. Once the juice is lukewarm, mix it with the honey and pour into a clean jar or bottle.