This crabapple jelly recipe is a real boon if you have access to crab apples.
Jelly may seem like a daunting thing to make but not really. Once you have tried it a couple of times, making crab apple jelly, or any jelly, is pretty simple.
You do need to drain the juice in a jelly bag for quite a while.
One tip though – As I said above, please don’t squeeze the jelly bag to try to get the juice out faster, or to try to get what you think will be a greater quantity of juice. It will just make the juice cloudy and the end result will not be the beautiful jewel-like clear jelly we want.
If you have access to a crab apple tree and have been looking for crabapple recipes, start with this luscious jelly recipe.
See below for more tips.
Crabapple Jelly Recipe
Ingredients
- 3-4 quarts crab apples
- 1/2 cup vinegar
- 1 stick cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon whole cloves, wrapped in a cheese cloth bag
- 5 cups sugar
Instructions
- Boil the crab apples in a large pot with enough water to cover for about 20 minutes. Mash down and put everything into a jelly bag to drain overnight, or at least for several hours.
- Measure 5 1/2 cups of the drained juice. Boil the juice, vinegar, cinnamon and cloves for 4-5 minutes. Remove the cinnamon stick and bag of cloves. Bring back to a full boil. Add the sugar slowly, stirring all the time. Boil for 30 minutes, stirring often so it won’t boil over.
- Remove from the heat, stir up and remove all of the foam.
- Put the jelly into hot sterilized jars and top each jar with melted wax. When the wax has hardened, put the lids on firmly and label.
Tip:
- Do NOT squeeze the juice out of the jelly bag to make the process go faster. It will just make the juice cloudy.
- If you haven’t made jelly before, the wax referred to is a special parrafin wax that you can buy quite cheaply in hardware stores. It is made especially for jams and jellies.
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