BikeWalkBakeBarb: Apple Mint Jelly Yet Again: The Ratios with Fresh Apples

Making jam or jelly is always an exercise in math if you're not following a recipe precisely. For apple mint jelly the question becomes whether I have enough mint on hand to flavor a given quantity of apples. This set of instructions helps you calculate proportions based on what you have.

X = Cups of mint leaves and stems, chopped (yes, you can use the stems, which also carry the minty goodness; I leave out ones that are very thick and woody)

2X = Pounds of apples, quartered, not cored or peeled because you want to keep the pectin, and including any skins or cores you have from other appley goodness you're working on to provide extra pectin, although it can't be all skins/cores because then you won't have apple flesh to extract juice and flavor from

2X = Cups of liquid: Water, or half water and half white vinegar

If this fills an entire stockpot, split it into two so the cooking goes more efficiently.

Bring apples, liquid and mint to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook until apples turn to a soft mush, approximately 20 minutes. Mash it all up a bit with a potato masher

Set the apples and liquid to drain in a jelly strainer set-up or a sieve lined with cheesecloth set over a big bowl. Do not press on the solids. When you do that you end up with cloudy jelly because you pushed some solids into the juice. Let the mash sit for several hours or overnight to get every possible drop with the help of gravity.

Your labors and time yield a given amount of juice. Some recipes will tell you to add water to get to a specific number of cups. Why on why would you dilute the delicious juice you just made? Don't do that.

Your final math problems:

For each cup of juice, add 7/8 cup of white sugar. This is 3/4 of a cup plus 2 tablespoons.
For each 2 cups of juice, add 2 T. lemon juice

You can figure out smaller proportions where you fall short of a full cup or you can accept that cooking is improv, start with a baseline that rounds down rather than up because you can't unsugar something, and taste the juice at some point as it cooks.

I did this the other day and ended up with 6 cups of minty apple juice. That yielded 3 half-pints, 9 quarter-pints of jelly.

I probably skimmed off another quarter-pint of foam from the top to create nice clear jelly. That foam doesn't go to waste at our house; I put it in a little jar that goes in the fridge to be eaten as scrap jelly. It tastes good; it's just not ready for its close-up.

Related reading