My crab apple jelly recipe is so easy to make, if you’ve never made crab apple jelly before this is a great recipe to use.

A friend of mine dropped off a huge bag of crab apples and without a clue what to do with them I finally decided on making a few jars of crab apple jelly.

You might be interested to check out this post on making grape jam without pectin (luckily, crab apples are pretty high in natural pectin so they make for a great jelly recipe).

Anyway, without further a do – here’s my crab apple jelly recipe!

NOTE: I usually work to a third sugar +100g to however much crab apples I’ve got. You can choose to add more, but I naturally prefer slightly less sweet jam!

Crab apple jelly recipe

1.25kg crab apples

3 inches lemon rind (pith removed)

About 1.25 litres water (or enough to cover the crab apples)

500g sugar

Method:

Wash the crab apples, remove any leaves, cut out any bruised bits and cut them in half.

Drop them into a saucepan along with the lemon rind, cover with water and bring to a boil then turn down the heat to a gentle simmer for about 30 minutes.

They’ll go very mushy but that’s OK. Remove from the heat and let them cool a little.

Meanwhile line a sieve with a muslin cloth or as I do, a clean tea towel and place it over a bowl. Pour the contents of the saucepan into the lined sieve, lift the edges of the cloth and let is sit there for a few hours or overnight to collect the juices.

Once done, discard the contents of the tea cloth. Pour the liquid into a clean saucepan, add the sugar and bring to a simmer for about 30 minutes or until the mixture has thickened.

To test it’s done; pour a teaspoon of the liquid onto a plate and run a finger through it. It wants to stay put. Remember, as it cools it will thicken/harden.

When it’s done pour it into sterialised jars (this quantity will make about 3 jars)