Homemade Pectin from Apple Scraps!

It has been one year now since we moved down to Oregon and I started up this blog.  Before we really knew anyone or got settled and I would stress about getting acquainted and involved.  One short year later and I often feel too busy and can't seem to arrange time to meet up with all the friends we really want to! Really good "problems" to have; just funny how life can change so quickly!

With these great berry pickers, we had loads of berries, berries for jam!

I remember this season last year, right after we moved into our rental (see that fun story here!) and the excess apples on the old tree behind the house began to fall.  Green and hard, they seemed to have little use.  This year, however, I found a wonderful use for them: Homemade fruit pectin!  Immature apples have a high concentration of natural pectin and are perfect for making your own for canning!  Forager's Harvest has a great description about the method of boiling down immature apples into pectin, but that's just about the gist of it: quarter apples (or even leave whole!), cover with water in a pan and boil it down!  American Prepper's Network and Mother Earth News also explain the same process as well as how to use your new pectin.

Baby Apples and the boiling process

I just used a standard strawberry freezer jam recipe from Land O' Lakes and it worked!  It gelled but I did have to boil it for a minute which the recipe didn't call for.  My only complaint is that it's VERY sweet.  I know that sugar to pectin ratio has to be just right, but my next mission is to find a recipe that comes out a little more fresh tasting and not quite so sugary! 

 

I just find it so fun to be able to use something that would go to waste to make something I would have to spend money on and use often!  Hope you can find these links to be of use as well!