In summer, my refrigerator is divided fairly equally into four quadrants: freshly harvested homegrown vegetables and fruit; jars of pickled foods; syrups, shrubs, and kombucha; and everything else. When I first started making drinking shrubs—concentrates made from fruit, sugar, and vinegar that are then diluted with seltzer—I usually had one or two flavors on hand at a time. Now the varieties grow with the season, and since I’ve added kombucha to the options, a dozen bottles typically line my fridge shelves after I’ve just decanted a fresh batch.

Of the collection, the watermelon shrub and syrup recipe that I share this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon has some of the freshest flavor because the juice is never heated. The herbs I add to shrubs and syrups enhance their complexity. Like watermelon, basil stays fresh and bright with the no-heat method. Other herbs also pair well with watermelon, including cilantro, lemon thyme, and the mint featured in Watermelon-Mint Sorbet and Watermelon and Feta Salad.

Learn more about syrups and shrubs and get the complete recipe for Watermelon-Basil Syrup or Shrub in my column.

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Twice as Tasty

Excited about making more shrubs and syrups? Here are just a few other fruits that work well as these concentrates and taste delicious mixed with seltzer, used in cocktails, or in the case of syrups, heated until thick enough to pour on sourdough pancakes or waffles.

• Rhubarb: Rhubarb breaks down more easily with heat, so I often stew the rhubarb with some sugar and strain out the solids before I use the remaining syrup as is, add vinegar to turn it into a shrub and extend its shelf life, or combine it with kombucha scoby and water to ferment into rhubarb kombucha.
• Strawberry: Strawberries are versatile in shrubs and syrups: use fresh or frozen and heat or don’t heat the fruit or juice as you like. They also balance tart fruit like rhubarb in Strawberry-Rhubarb Shrub.
• Raspberries: Other berries also make delicious syrups and shrubs from fresh or frozen fruit. Raspberries in particular take on caramel undertones when roasted to draw out their juices.

You can find specific shrub, syrup, and drink recipes in the recipe index and my pickling cookbook. When you look at them, you’ll see that I use various techniques to extract juice from fruit: using sugar to draw juices out of fresh fruit, heating on the stovetop or in the oven, freezing and then thawing to separate juices and solids, or as with watermelon, pureeing the fruit and straining off excess juice. These techniques work well with many other fruits, including cherries, peaches, pears, currants, and plums. They even work with some vegetables, such as cucumbers, tomatillos, and beets, to create savory shrubs.

If you live in Montana’s Flathead Valley, you can learn more about making shrubs and syrups in my cocktail and mocktail workshop.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.