Apple Jelly

It’s fall, it’s apple season! What could be more delicious and enjoyable than making your own apple jelly? For the occasion, I brought out my steam juicer that I hadn’t used since the early 90’s! Well packaged, it is still like new and I found myself propelled back in time. A recipe steeped in nostalgia.

Recipe for apple jelly:

-3kg of untreated apples
-1 lemon
-sugar, lots of sugar
-pectin powder (optional)

Here is the juicer . There are three compartments. The lower one contains the boiling water, the upper one the fruit, and the middle one recovers the juice of the steamed fruit. We can do without this tool and cook apples and recover the juice by pressing in a cloth, but I find the extractor much more comfortable use.

Place the washed and quartered apples in the upper bowl. The tank can be filled more than half way.

Put the extractor on the fire and let it boil for a good hour. The apples should have exploded and been mashed. You can turn off the heat and let it sit for another 15 minutes to collect as much juice as possible.

The result is a very hot apple juice that is not very pleasant in the mouth. It’s not sweet at all. Weigh the juice obtained.

Then add the same weight of sugar. You can also add the juice of a lemon for more natural pectin.

You can replace the sugar with special jelly sugar. Just follow the instructions for use. You can also mix classic sugar with pectin powder, following the quantities indicated on the box (I find my pectin at G.Detou in Paris).

Put it in a jam pan (for the lucky owners of a copper pan!). It also works very well in a classic pan. Bring to a boil.

In the case of using sugar without pectin (which is the case here):

Skim as needed and cook for almost thirty minutes. You have to do the cooled drop test to see if the jelly sets. Pour a little juice on a cold plate, put it in a cool place for 2 minutes and check the consistency of the jelly.

Bernard’s advice:
I prefer to bake with a classic sugar, which takes longer to prepare and is probably more laborious, but the color you get has nothing to do with a jelly sugar. Why is this? Because the jelly sugar will cook for 8 minutes, whereas with a classic sugar, you have to cook longer, which evaporates more water and concentrates the taste and color!