One of the most useful, in my opinion, skills to have is the ability to "preserve the harvest". It is a sorely under-appreciated skill and art form. When people ask about a person's hobbies, you almost never hear them say "I like to preserve foods." After all, what kind of person enjoys spending hours over a hot stove, picking, washing, peeling, coring, crushing, cooking. Cooking is a hobby, preserving is apparently considered to be a skill, but it is one that is severely overlooked. never under-estimate a person that is skilled at preserving the harvest. That is a person that will not go hungry during lean economic times. Gardens, orchards, and berry yielding lands are more efficiently utilized. As a homesteader, it is a skill that is absolutely vital and should never be overlooked.
Learning how to make jam and jelly is fun and simple. There are numerous recipes to be had differing by fruit type mainly, but they all have a few things in common. First, you can make jam and jelly from almost any kind of fruit you can find. The difference between them is in the core substance you use: preserves are made using the whole fruit, intact but softened by cooking; jam is usually made from the whole fruit, crushed or minced; jelly is made from the juice alone. In this segment, I'll focus on jelly-making.
You want to use the best fruit, ripe and fresh. You'll want to wash it and prepare it:
- Grapes, strawberries, and soft fruits, remove stems and crush slightly
- Apples, crab apples, pears, and harder fruits, peel and quarter
Don't underestimate the value of peelings! I usually peel peaches and apples for preserving, but the peelings themselves can be cooked down and squeezed to provide the juice for jelly! In this way you waste almost nothing.
You can even make jelly from bottled juice from the store, but keep in mind that you will probably have to add pectin to convince it to gel. Pectin is a natural element found in the peelings of all fruits, which is why home-made juice for your jelly may require little to no extra pectin.
Take your fruit and measure it out into a deep pot. Add between 1/4-1/2 C water (for soft fruits) to 1/2 C water for harder fruits and simmer until the fruit is soft. Place 2 layers of cheesecloth in a colander and add the softened fruit/juice and allow it to drain. You can squeeze it off a little to get as much juice as possible, but be careful not to add too much pulp to your juice.
Measure again into your cooking pot and for each qt of juice you'll want to add between 3 and 5 cups of sugar. The more bitter the fruit (crab apples for example), the more sugar you'll need to add. If adding pectin, increase the sugar input. Then you cook on low (stirring continuously, the sugar will burn FAST!) until the juice reaches the gelling point. Gel is reached when a spoonful of the cooled mixture slides off the spoon in a solid sheet. It takes quite a long while for this point to be reached! Generally it gets easy to tell by the way the mass is cooking.
You then ladle the hot jelly into prepared jars (I recommend no larger than half-pint for ease of use) and seal them in a boiling water canner (BWC), usually for about 10-15 minutes. You can create spiced jellies by using a spice bag and adding a stick of cinnamon, some cloves, and a couple of nutmegs.
Enjoy!
