A teacher at T.'s school was selling green apples from her yard a few weeks ago, trying to get them all off the trees before the deer ate them, so I bought four or five pounds and made green apple pectin stock—basically concentrated cooked apple juice that's high in pectin so it can be used as a base for all kinds of jellies. You can keep it in the fridge for a couple weeks or freeze it or can it and it'll last for months. This stuff is what I use to make wine and tea jellies in the winter.You chop up the apples—cores, seeds, peel, and all, add water to just cover them, and simmer until they fall apart into mush:
Then you dump everything into a very fine sieve—I use a bouillon strainer (here's an example, since the picture of mine got lost when my computer died last week)—or a huge jelly bag and let it drain and drain and drain:
Then return that golden juice to the pan and boil it to reduce it by about half. That's it. Green apple pectin stock.
7 comments:
Thank you for sharing this, it's exactly the kind of valuable information that I'm sure has become common knowledge to you, but is totally new to me. I'm really looking forward to reading your book, I'm pretty new to canning so I'm sure it will be full of wonderful suggestions. Thanks again!
Sammi: I only learned you could do this with green apples a couple years ago! In much less time it'll become second nature to you, as will the canning process itself, I'm sure.
A very wise idea.
Thanks for this - I've been stalking Christine Ferber's methods for a while (which often use green apple jelly), but I don't have her book so I was planning to just wing it whenever I got around to trying this method.
As fun as it is to fly by the seat of my pants, I do like a tested process now and again!
Margie: Ferber's book is excellent; I love it. My sense, though, is that most of our great-grandmothers knew all this about green apples—my mom says that every jam and preserve her mom made had chopped-up green apples in it, kind of a less-refined version of the high-end Ferber method.
So . . . if you were winging it, you'd basically reduce some wine or make a strong tea, add a few cups of this "stock" and a good dose of lemon juice, then about 3/4 cup sugar for each cup of liquid (sounds like a lot, but jelly needs it; make sure your juice is good and tart). Cook to about 8 degrees above boiling (220°F at sea level), and there's your jelly.
Thank you so much for sharing this! The process looks simple - which is right up my alley! :)
Hey Liana,
Just wanted to let you know that I picked up your book a few weeks ago, and last week I made your apple sauce, this week I made your grape jelly with green apples, and next week I'll probably make apple butter in my crock pot like you suggest (and will likely pickle some kohlrabi using your recipe). I'm having so much fun with your book!
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