Blackcurrants — season, tips, and recipes in New Zealand
Blackcurrants is a fruit available in New Zealand during December, January, February, peaking in January. This page is a practical guide for home cooks: when to buy blackcurrants, how to pick a good one, how to store it, what it goes well with, three original recipes, and detailed nutrition information.
NZ is a significant blackcurrant producer, mainly in Canterbury. Most NZ blackcurrants are processed into juice, powder, or supplements for their exceptional antioxidant content.
How to pick a good one
Deeply purple-black, firm, still attached to their stems (strigs). Remove stems before cooking. Rarely eaten raw (too tart).
How to store it
Fridge for a few days. Freeze beautifully: spread on a tray first then bag.
Goes well with
cream: Blackcurrant's intensity and sharpness are moderated by cream. The combination is more balanced than blackcurrant alone and allows the flavour to develop rather than shock.
dark chocolate: Blackcurrant's tartness and complexity sit against dark chocolate's bitterness. Both are high in anthocyanins with similar flavour profiles at a molecular level.
apple: Apple's mild acidity and neutral sweetness carry blackcurrant's intense flavour. Used together in crumbles and jams where blackcurrant's sharpness needs to be distributed more evenly.
vanilla: Vanilla's warmth moderates blackcurrant's astringency. Used together in desserts and drinks to make the combination more approachable.
Recipes
Blackcurrant Compote
On yoghurt, ice cream, pavlova.
Ingredients: 200g blackcurrants, 3 tbsp sugar, splash water, squeeze lemon
Method: Simmer everything 8 min until berries burst and liquid is syrupy. Cool.
Blackcurrant Crumble
Tart base, sweet top.
Ingredients: 300g blackcurrants, 3 tbsp sugar, 80g oats, 60g flour, 60g brown sugar, 50g cold butter
Method: Toss berries with sugar in dish. Rub oats, flour, sugar, butter until crumbly. Top. Bake 180C for 25 min.
Blackcurrant & Apple Jam
Classic. Apple provides pectin.
Ingredients: 300g blackcurrants, 2 apples (diced), 400g sugar, 100ml water
Method: Simmer blackcurrants, apple, water until soft. Add sugar, stir until dissolved. Boil hard 10 min until setting point. Jar hot.
Nutrition
100g provides a staggering 300% of your daily vitamin C. That's 3x more vitamin C than oranges gram for gram. Also contains 4x more anthocyanins than blueberries. Extremely high in manganese and iron for a fruit. About 63 calories per 100g. The single most vitamin-C-dense common fruit. You'd need 6 vitamin C tablets to match 100g of blackcurrants.