Make Your Own Pectin
Making your own pectin is super easy and one of those things that once you do, you will wonder why you every bought it in the first place. While there are many fruits that you can use to make pectin, the easiest and most reliable is the apple.
Unripe apples are one of the highest sources of pectin out there, but they can be hard to get ahold of. We like to use crab apples, as there always seems to be an over abundance and there is only so much crab apple jelly we can eat. Don’t have a crab apple source? Don’t worry. Cooking apples like granny smith or cooking braeburns are also very high in pectin, especially the cores, pips and skins, so this is a great way to use up extra from your apple pies. I like to keep a bag of skins and cores in the freezer and then make up a batch of pectin when I have enough.
Yields about 400ml of pectin.
Ingredients:
1kg of crab apples, cooking apples, unripe apples or apple cores and skins
enough water to cover
Method:
wash and chop your apples.
place in a large pan and cover with water
cook for aboutu 30 minutes until the apples are all soft, but not mush
place a fine mesh seive over a bowl and seive the mixture through. You may need to use a spoon to get all the liquid out.
pour into a sterilised jar. You can go about canning this in a hot water canner, but I usually just stick the jar in the freezer. One jar usually is enough for one batch of jam with 1kg of fruit.
