We have several crab apple trees on our homestead so I decided to make some Crab Apple Jelly with some of them. It's quite easy and makes some really, really delicious jelly.
Crab Apple Jelly
crab apples
sugar
apple cider vinegar
I soak my crab apples in a sink full of water and I add in about 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar. Let the apples soak for 30 minutes. If the crab apples are big enough, remove the stems. Our crab apples were super tiny and I just left the stems on them. We had about 3 1/2-4 lbs. of tiny crab apples.
Now, put the crab apples into a large pot and cover with water.
Bring them to a boil and then simmer them for 30 minutes. Pour through a sieve and now you have the juice needed to make the jelly. At this point, I threw out the boiled crab apples for the goats and donkeys. Take the juice and measure it. We ended up with 6 cups of juice.
Put the juice into a pot and add in the sugar. We used 4 1/2 cups of sugar but just use 3/4 cups of sugar for every 1 cup of juice you get. I also stirred in 4 drops of red food coloring to make it look prettier but that is not needed. The juice shown above is what it looks like without the added color.
Bring the mixture to a boil, turn the heat down to medium and let it gently boil for 15 minutes, stirring the whole time. Once the timer goes off, pour into hot sterilized jars and water bath process them for 10 minutes. Crab Apples contain natural pectin and do not require any added. You can use Clear Jel if you want though for a better set.
This made us 7 jars of jelly.
This jelly goes great on homemade biscuits or toast.
