De-seeding raspberries?

[Tuckermor]

Hello!
Does anyone have any ideas about how to do this easily and economically? I
went to a cookware store today to look at food mills, but the only screen that
looked small enough was 1 mm, and the only food mill that had one was $200--too
rich for me! Has anyone had success doing this with a 2mm screen in a food
mill?
Thanks!

[Kathi]

I just push them through a sieve. It may take a little longer, but it
doesn't cost anything.....

Kathi

tuck...@aol.com (Tuckermor) wrote in message news:<20010625015419...@ng-fk1.aol.com>...

[Ellen Wickberg]

Someone, I don't remember her name, used what I think of as a darning
mushroom ( a wooden semi-sphere on a handle, that fit her strainer size.
This rounded wooden surface pushed the berries through rapidly, leaving the
seeds behind. I tried it and it worked well. Ellen
----------
In article <57ce072a.0106...@posting.google.com>,

[see.m...@mouse-potato.com]

Tuckermor wrote:

> Hello!
> Does anyone have any ideas about how to do this easily and economically?

And Ellen Wickberg <e...@paralynx.com> wrote:

> Someone, I don't remember her name, used what I think of as a darning
> mushroom ( a wooden semi-sphere on a handle, that fit her strainer size.
> This rounded wooden surface pushed the berries through rapidly, leaving
> the seeds behind. I tried it and it worked well.

Yup, that was I. You can always bring me out of lurking with this
topic. Here's what I've posted in the past:

I, too, found that the holes in a food mill were too big. I also tried
a chinoise but it was very messy and had a lot of waste. I finally
found a strainer with holes smaller than the seeds. I've seen these
strainers in kitchen stores: they're the ones that have a hemispherical
mesh body, with a wide band of white plastic around the top continuing
into a white handle, with two lips on the strainer to balance over a bowl.
These strainers come in sizes from 2" diameter to about 8". I have a 6"
one, and larger than that size the mesh changes and the holes are bigger
than raspberry seeds. There's no name on my strainer but I think they're
fairly common.

I puree the raspberries in a food processor. The seeds are so tough
that they don't get chopped even by the metal blade. I pour a small
amount of the puree into the strainer. I used to stir it around and
around with a flexible rubber spatula, around and around, pushing down,
around and around, until I pushed the pulp through and the seeds were
left. This took FOREVER but it worked. But my hand and wrist got very
tired.

A few years ago my mom came to visit during raspberry season and saw
how long this process took. She, the queen of inventors, thought there
must be a better way. We spent hours in a kitchen supply store looking
for new ideas. And she found one. She bought me a very large wooden
mallet; I think it's for mashing or ricing potatoes. The curve of its
bottom face almost matches the curve of the strainer. The mallet is
shaped like a large mushroom. The face is about 3" or 4" in diameter.
That night we pureed up some raspberries, put them in the strainer,
and used the mallet to stir them around. The pulpy mass was reduced
to a pile of seeds in about 10 seconds. I am not exaggerating. I was
sure I had broken the mesh of the strainer and that everything had just
fallen through. It was *astounding*.

So what once took hours to do about 15 pounds of raspberries now takes me
about a half hour. And I haven't broken a strainer yet. And I haven't
ever found even ONE raspberry seed in all the jars of jam I've made.

Last summer I went to buy this same set-up for a friend. I went to a
different kitchen store and started looking around for a large wooden
mallet. A clerk offered to help me and I didn't want to go through the
whole story so I just described the shape of the mallet. She showed
me a product with Graham Kerr's name on it, called a fruit masher.
It was a mushroomed-shaped wooden mallet, sold for pushing fruit through
a strainer! I was so shocked. I turned to the clerk and exclaimed,
"But my mother invented this!" The clerk did not share my indignation.

And if you can't find the wooden mallet, I've discovered that a soup-ladle
works fairly well as it has the necessary bowl shape. It's a bit more
trouble as the fruit can fall inside the ladle, but it works fine.
This sieving technique also works on blueberries, if you want to remove
the skins. I chop them slightly, then cook them for under five minutes
so that the skins soften and some burst, and then I sieve them. I don't
sieve blueberries for making jam but I do for blueberry ice-cream.

Sandy
new address:
sandyf at
drizzle dot
com

[Kathi]

yep, that' what I meant. But I don't have the 'mushroom mallet', I
just use a spoon. I suppose if I had 15 pounds of raspberries though,
I'd get one! ;-)

Kathi

[Tuckermor]

Thank you, one and all! We don't actually have raspberries yet, but I wanted
to be prepared. I have a strainer just like the one you described, with the
white plastic, and now I'll go look for the "mushroom mallet." And then go sit
by the raspberry patch and wait....