The Cottage Smallholder

Can I resurrect this thread please?

I have just produce 1.5 litres of cloudy juice

It was a stupid mistake but I was using my steam juicer and had put in about 4lbs of hedgerow fruit which when I checked it after an hour or so of steaming had broken down nicely.

After a while I looked to see how much juice there was left in the fruit and it looked very wet indeed so I did it.....I gave it a little press and all this lovely juice oozed out.....I knew in an instant I had committed the cardinal sin and that the juice would be cloudy...........and so it came to pass

However - and this is why I have gatecrashed David's thread. I did end up with 1.5 litres of juice from the 4lbs fruit and the actual recipe (out of the River Cottage preserves book) reckoned to expect 1.2 litres.

So if you squeeze or press you do get more juice but it will be cloudy.

Now I just need to know if I can rescue it.

If I set the steamer off again with the same pulp of fruit in it and pour the cloudy juice over it will that help - or should I dump the pulp and maybe just put another small batch of apples in the pan and pour over the hedgerow juice and steam that or will that alter the flavour too much

Has anyone tried rescuing their cloudy juice and got a good result - any thoughts?

Ha ha, that made me larf out loud - I promise I wont squeeze, prod or poke it next time (but why is there so much juice left behind ). I'm one of those OCD types who has to scrape every last little bit of mixture out of the bowl when making a cake, squeezes the toothpaste tube till it cracks, and turns sauce bottles upside down to get the last bit of ketchup so you can imagine how annoying it is for me to leave the juice alone

However I bring good news

I steamed a few more apples and then poured my cloudy juice over the apples when they were pulpy and that sort of strained the juice through into the collection section of the steamer. Then, when I siphoned it off I did so through a nice clean muslin square and ended up with 1800 ml of lovely clear juice which has potted up into 4 1/2 lbs of jelly. Mind you it is dark - which surprised me as not made it before and was expecting something more pinky red. Just hope it tastes good - I'll let you know!

Now I must make some labels as hubby wants to take a couple of jars into work tomorrow for the gardeners who take care of the grounds and who were very helpful in pointing him in the right direction for the contents of the jelly

Ah  I see.

No please never worry about telling me stuff - I'm always grateful and yes my cloudy juice was what I had siphoned off after the steaming process. It was like yours a very pretty dark pinky mauve colour and went quite dark after I added sugar and boiled.

So, it may have been OK after all (drat) but never mind - it had a second steaming along with some more apples and was lovely and clear so no complaints. I'll no better next time (so long as I stop prodding )

Thanks again

Maura