Crab Apple Jelly

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Large heavy preserving pan or stockpot
• •Jelly bag or square of clean muslin
• •Sugar thermometer (optional but helpful)
• •4 small sterilized jam jars with lids
• •Slotted spoon and ladle
• •A couple of small saucers for the wrinkle test

Instructions

1. 1

   Wash and halve the apples

   Tip the crab apples into the sink and wash them well. They've usually been on the ground, so give them more attention than you would shop-bought fruit. Pull off the stems and pick out anything properly bruised or rotten. Halve them with a knife. Don't bother coring or peeling. The skins, the cores, the pips, they all carry pectin and flavour, and you'll be straining the lot anyway.

   Crab apples vary wildly. Some are the size of a marble, some bigger than a walnut. Halve the larger ones, leave the tiny ones whole. Uniformity isn't the point.
2. 2

   Simmer until soft

   Put the apples in a large heavy pan and pour in just enough water to cover them. Bring to a gentle simmer and let them cook, lid slightly ajar, for about forty-five minutes. You're looking for the fruit to collapse completely into a soft, rosy mush. Stir occasionally with a wooden spoon, breaking up the larger pieces against the side of the pan. The kitchen will start to smell of wild orchards, slightly tart, slightly floral. That's the sign it's working.

   Don't be tempted to add more water than you need. The wetter the pulp, the longer the boil later, and a long boil dulls the colour.
3. 3

   Strain through a jelly bag

   Scald a jelly bag or a square of clean muslin with boiling water and suspend it over a deep bowl. A sturdy chair turned upside down with the bag tied to its legs works as well as anything fancy. Tip the cooked fruit and all its juice into the bag and leave it to drip overnight. Don't squeeze it. I know it's tempting. But pressing forces the cloudy pulp through and you lose the clarity that makes a jelly worth the trouble. Patience now, jewels in the morning.

   If you don't own a jelly bag, a clean cotton tea towel will do. Set it inside a colander balanced over a large bowl and leave it overnight in a cool corner of the kitchen.
4. 4

   Measure and weigh out sugar

   In the morning, the bowl will hold a clear, pale-pink juice that looks like nothing much but is the whole point of the exercise. Measure it. For every 600ml of juice, weigh out 450g of granulated sugar. Write it down somewhere if you're easily distracted. I've miscounted this more than once and ended up with jelly that was too sweet or that wouldn't set, and there's no fixing it after the fact.

5. 5

   Boil to setting point

   Pour the juice into a wide, heavy pan. Add the sugar and the lemon juice and the thyme or bay if you're using it. Stir gently over a low heat until every grain of sugar has dissolved. Run a finger across the back of a spoon and you should feel no graininess. Now turn the heat right up and bring it to a hard, rolling boil. Don't stir from this point on. The jelly needs to climb up the sides of the pan and bubble furiously. It will go from pink to amber to a deeper, rose-gold colour, and the bubbles will change from a frothy chaos to a slower, glossier thump. That's setting point approaching.

   Put a couple of small saucers in the freezer before you start. You'll need them for the wrinkle test.
6. 6

   Test for the set

   After about eight to ten minutes of hard boiling, take the pan off the heat and spoon a little jelly onto a cold saucer. Let it sit for half a minute, then push it with your finger. If the surface wrinkles and the jelly holds its shape rather than running back, you're there. If it's still loose, put the pan back on the heat for another two or three minutes and test again. Trust the wrinkle, not the clock. Every batch is different. Some years the apples are juicier, some years drier. The jelly tells you when it's ready.

7. 7

   Pot into warm jars

   Skim any pale scum from the surface with a slotted spoon. Fish out the herbs if you used any. Ladle the jelly into warm sterilized jars, filling them right to the top. Seal while still hot. Set the jars on a wooden board to cool, and listen out for the small satisfying ping as the lids draw down. Label them with the date. You'll thank yourself in February.

Chef Tips

• •Crab apples are the easiest fruit in the world to make jelly from because they do all the work themselves. If you can't find them, very tart cooking apples like Bramleys will work, though you'll need to add the juice of an extra lemon to compensate for the lower pectin and sharper edge that crab apples bring naturally.
• •Don't squeeze the jelly bag. I know I've already said it. I'm saying it again because it's the single thing that makes the difference between a clear, jewel-bright jelly and a cloudy one. Cloudy still tastes good, but clear is the prize, and patience is the only price.
• •If your jelly doesn't set on the first try, tip it back into the pan, add the juice of another lemon, and boil it hard for another five minutes. Test again. Almost every failed set can be rescued this way. Jelly is more forgiving than its reputation suggests.
• •Serve it with cold ham, with a strong cheddar, with roast lamb, with game. Stir a spoonful into the pan after frying pork chops and let it melt into the juices with a splash of cider. There are few better midweek sauces.

Advance Preparation

• •The straining stage requires an overnight sit, so plan the cooking across two days. Cook the fruit in the evening, strain overnight, finish the jelly the following morning.
• •Sealed properly into sterilized jars, crab apple jelly keeps in a cool dark cupboard for up to a year. Once opened, refrigerate and use within a month, though it rarely lasts that long.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 20g, 1 tablespoon)