I spent all day today processing apples from our trees. After I finished peeling and coring them I ended up with a pretty substantial pile of apple bits. It would be a shame to just throw them out so I decided to use them for all they were worth. I was originally thinking of making them into apple cider vinegar but I didn’t really have a container I could use for that. Instead I decided that I’d make jelly out of them. Since you generally just throw out the fruit when you make jelly it kind of seemed appropriate to use the unusable parts of the fruit to start with.
What you will need:
Apple peels and cores
Water
Sugar
1 Tbs lemon juice for every 2 cups of liquid
1. Put the peels and cores in a large pot. Add water until you can see it just under the top layer of fruit. Bring to a boil.
2. Boil fruit, uncovered, until it is soft. Strain liquid into a new pot.
3. For each cup of liquid add 3/4 cup of sugar. Add lemon juice and bring to a boil. Watch it carefully so that it doesn’t boil over.
4. To check consistency: put some ice in a bowl. Scoop up a small amount of liquid with a spoon and place the spoon on the ice to get it to cool quickly. Turn spoon sideways. If the liquid has jelled onto the spoon and doesn’t appear syrupy then it is done and ready to can. If you have a candy thermometer, you want the temperature to be 220 deg F.
5. Ladle hot jelly into sterilized jars. Put on sterile lids and process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes.
Why did it turn out red?rec
I wanted to note that I have read repeatedly that the seeds are similar to apricot and almonds in they offer great anticancer and health benefits. I blend the cores for jelly OR I juice with them. Break the seeds, get their benefits. If I make applesauce I cook them down with the peel which is good for you and saves a lot of work and they soften and break small enough they are not really noticeable but if you blend the sauce for just a few seconds it fixes that. It does NOT turn it into baby food puree, just makes the peels very fine. And you get the benefit of the whole apple and no waste. I also dehydrate the fiber left after juicing (or from ANY juicing)then blend it fine and use in my tortilla mix made with millet, buckwheat, rye, oat, garbanzo, corn masa, some wheat and rice flours and oat and wheat bran with a bit of vital wheat gluten for cohesion and whatever else sounds good. NO WASTE!!!
I love the red color that you have…I used 2 cinnamon sticks with my peels/cores, so I have a brownish/auburn tint to my batch, and it turned out fantastic…thanks so much for the idea. I started out thinking of doing some mulled cider with the peels/cores, but Jelly sounded oh so much better!!