For apple and/or crab jelly, and perhaps other fruits like brambles which don't have large pits.
A couple of years ago I was given a juicer from someone who said they had bought it but never used it.
I've not used it either till now, but I wondered if one could avoid the boiling and straining phase of making jelly by the simple expedient of whacking the fruit into a juicer, and using the juice with sugar, a squeeze of lemon and a knob of butter to make jelly direct.
Inspired or crazy, and if crazy, why? I suppose the result might be a little cloudy, and it might be an idea to let the juice settle, and decant or syphon it off, or even strain the juice. But I'd guess you'd get more jelly, even if a bit cloudy, from a given amount of apples (or whatever)
David
I don't see why it shouldn't work but like you said you may end up with a cloudier version. When I use our apple juicer though there is a clear liquid and a frothier part so maybe you can still separate off the clear part and have a clear jelly and use up the rest to make a cloudy version?
I think I got the answer to my own question already. I collected a load of windfall hedgerow apples today, and thought I'd see how the juicer does in action.
Doesn't extract all that much juice, leaves a load of wet pulp behind that is a bugger to clean, and the juice was OK, but I think I'd rather eat an apple.
Anyone wanna buy a juicer?
David
that isn't so good we got quite dry pulp from ours but it was rather messy as the juice tended to leak. Maybe you just need a better juicer? I find it is great when we have a huge quantity of apples - unfortunately we only had one year of that
I dunno, pectin is a bit of a mystery to me, except that I was advised to boil my wild plums, then let them cool before taking the pits out, partly for ease of de-pitting, partly to get pectin in the mix.
I've always had the impression, for good or ill, that crabs are high in pectin, so figured I'd shove some crabs in an apple jelly, but maybe crabs are just high in core and skin compared to fruit.
If anyone could post knowledgeably about pectin, I'd be most obliged.
David
David B said:
If anyone could post knowledgeably about pectin, I'd be most obliged.
I have often made my own pectin, mostly because I have bought homes where there were a lot of apple trees in the garden & therefore huge amounts of fallen apples to clear away.....!!! I now keep chickens to clear them; they love them.
I found the info on this site to be very useful as it is very easy to understand.It certainly helped me.
http://www.pickyourown.org/pectin.htm
http://www.pickyourown.org/makeyourownpectin.htm
*** Do remember this is an American site so check on equivalent British measurements; their pints are NOT the same as ours.
"The beautiful is as useful as the useful...perhaps more so."
from Les Miserables
Many thanks, that was helpful.
Looks like the less sweet/ripe wild plums I've been using for my jam are ideal, and I might have got over-confident with them to the point where other fruits will prove a let-down. My evening primrose jelly didn't set nearly as well.
Hedgerow apples/crabs also look ideal, so perhaps I shall take the easy way out and do some apple jelly, too, and confine myself to plum and apple for jam in future.
And maybe bramble jelly - that also looks ideal.
I didn't think my experiment with dewberries was as successful as my blackberry jelly - not quite so well set, and not as flavoursome, even though I prefer the taste of raw dewberry to that of blackberry.
Maybe they were sweeter and riper than the brambles I used.
The only other wild fruit I could get in sufficient quantity in a good year would be wimberry/bilberry, and they take a lot of time to pick and are so good for other purposes that I'd need a real glut to use them for jam.
David
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