I'm following the Ball canning recipe for apple jelly. Sort of. They rant on for a while about only using top produce and nothing with blemishes. Well my apples are free and unsprayed and have all the benefits and blemishes that come with that so :P to the Ball canning book.
1) Start with a large box full of free apples. (box is not really full as I've already got a pot going)
2) Cut the apples so as to remove the bad spots, stems, major bruising, etc. These are free apples so I'm not too worried about getting every last little scrap. If a side is damaged I just don't use that side at all. The scraps are going in the compost pile so either way I benefit from the huge box of free apples. You will see rather large chunks of apple in the compost bowl. Don't be tempted, they're gross and will pollute the flavor of your jelly. With free apples, it's ok to toss (compost) the iffy bits. You have my permission.
The double shot here is the same apple. It had 1 perfect side and 1 horrible side, but you couldn't tell when you cut it open which is which. Just a lesson in "look at both sides of the apple before you throw it in the pot".
3) Admire the beauty of the interior of some of the apples. This is where the shockingly beautiful champagne pink at the end comes from.
4) Start a large stock pot going about 1/2 full of water. I can't tell you an amount because you'll have a different pot. Generally I start with it 1/2 full of water and then add water as needed until the apples are mushy.
5) Let them boil / simmer (your preference) away until they can all be easily smashed with a spoon or the are falling apart anyway when you stir the pot.
6) This is the part I don't have a photo of. When they are all nice and smoooshy. Take a canning jar, a canning funnel and coffee filters of some kind. (I had a bunch left over from when I switched my pot from paper filters to a mesh filter so that is what I used) I find the cone filters stand up better to this kind of abuse than the circular ones. Stack in order, Canning jar, canning funnel, 2 coffee filters with the seams opposite of each other. Cone filters have a seam down one side. When you layer one in side the other, simply flip one around so you have a solid side and a seamed side on each edge.
7) This is the lovely canning jar full of yummy apple goodness ready to make into jelly.
Notes on quantity. I started out with a large file box nearly full of apples. Many hours later I have 5 quarts of juice + 2 little 1/2 pint jars. I probably could have spent more time extracting juice from the pulp but I'm lazy and when it was becoming to much of an effort I'd throw the pulp in the compost bowl.
Part 2 will cover the actual canning process probably to happen some time next week. All the juice is in the freezer as I have another bushel of apples to go through. erk, I'm insane.
1 comment:
oh god, apple jelly! yummy!
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