Susan's saintly crabapple jelly
My friend and coworker Roger was bragging this week about his wife Susan and a crabapple jelly she had whipped up.
Crabapples are a tiny version of an apple — generally too small to mess with. They're also very tart and found unpalatable by people.
However, people over the years have managed to come up with culinary ways to use them.
Roger brought in some of the jelly Susan made, along with some home-made biscuits, which was a yummy combination. He liked the fact that if you took a spoonful of the jelly, and then returned to the container later, the jelly would have shifted to even out, as if the jelly had not been sampled.
Our professional taste test team at the Enterprise-Record agreed that Susan's crabapple jelly was indeed yummy and a rare treat.
Susan's recipe:
1. Juice the crabapples. (I have a steamer/juicer -- makes it easy.)
2. Measure equal parts crabapple juice and white sugar into a large saucepan.
3. Cook until the mixture "thickly coats" a metal spoon.
4. Pour into sterile jars and seal with two-part sterile lids.
5. Process in water bath. (I usually just turn them upside down for 5 minutes, then turn them over again.)
Extra cooking tips:
The syrup jells better when batches are kept small. A mixture of 4 cups juice and 4 cups sugar is about as much as I'd recommend cooking down at once. Then again, since it doesn't have to be stirred or tended while it's cooking, doing several small batches is as easy (maybe easier?) than one large one.