On September 14, I picked about ten cones/fronds of edible sumac from trees growing wild near a grocery store. These are the furry marroonish cones you see by the roadside often in overgrown, weedy areas. I brought them home in a plastic grocery bag, and put them in the refrigerator. Three days later I:
- Rinsed the fronds in cold water.
- Filled a stainless steel bowl with about two quarts of water.
- Broke up five cones into conelets, and stripped the sticky seeds from them. The seeds are similar to pomegranate. The seed stripping need not be complete or perfect.
- Swished seeds around in the water and let the mixture sit in the sun for about two hours, as if making sun tea. In two hours the water had turned a darkish pink.
- Poured the seed-water mixture through a colander as a coarse filter. This removed most of the seeds and any twigs.
- Used a single cup coffee filter and a funnel to fine filter the remaining liquid which has fine “hairs”.
- Resulting mixture is a very clear, rich pink, and tastes like lemonade without the sugar.
- Added a teaspoon of sugar to an eight ounce glass. This is a matter of taste.
- Drank as I would lemonade.
This was my first attempt at sumac-ade, and it was very easy to do, and quite good. If we, in the northern climes ever get cut off from our southern regions we can still have pink lemonade. The tang is supposedly malic acid, and it resides in the slight bit of hairy fruit that surround the very large seed of the sumac. The trick is to rough up the berries enough in stripping that they release their color and flavor. Sumac is native to New England as I do believe the Native tribes here used it very well.
