Friday, September 25, 2009

Crab Apple Butter

Back in mid-August, we harvested 35 1/2 pounds of large red crab apples (sizes ranged from large cherry to near golf ball), and the very same day canned 20 pints (and froze several more) of delicious crab apple butter. From picking to canning, it is a long all-day affair, but I'm telling you these lip-smacking preserves are totally worth it.
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Last year—our first year canning anything—we managed only 10 pints of crab apple jam, and it took almost four hours just coring the little buggers (they do have seeds almost as big as regular apple seeds). Because crab apples naturally contain a lot of pectin, the finished product was a thick jelly with little chunks of crab apples. Very tasty, but I felt the process as well as the product could be improved. Since then, we have acquired a cone-shaped fruit and vegetable sieve, which eliminated the need for coring. We needed only to pare off any bad spots we noticed as we rinsed and de-stemmed. In a short time, our 32-quart pot was full—literally full—of all 35 1/2 pounds of our fruit.
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Next, we added some water (12-14 cups) and cooked them. And stirred, stirred, stirred. The two bad things about using a pot that big are that you must stir constantly or the bottom will burn and that you have to stand on a chair to do it. On the other hand, it was great to be able to deal with all of the crab apples at once.
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Once the crab apples were nice and mushy (doesn't take too long), we starting putting batches through the sieve, to press it into a smooth, seed-free consistency.
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The crab apple puree then went back into the giant pot, and we added about five pounds of sugar and six cinnamon sticks. We brought it all to a boil again, stirring constantly as always, to ensure that the sugar dissolved and that any lurking bacteria were boiled out of existence.
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All the while, we'd been sterilizing small batches of jars and lids in a pot of boiling water. At last, late at night, we ladled boiling hot crab apple butter into the jars, listening to the satisfying "pink!" of the lids sealing as we waited for subsequent batches of jars to be ready.
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If you have a crab apple tree, I highly recommend making some preserves, even if you just whip up a small amount for one jar in your fridge. It's excellent on toast, pancakes, ice cream, PBJ, biscuits...
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Our family of preserves: apricot jam, apple butter, crab apple butter.





1 comment:

  1. Thank you so much for posting. I'm making it for the first time and needed a little heads up on how to go about making it.

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