My parent’s have a few lovely crab apple trees that line their driveway. I love when they start to turn bright red and after last year’s harvest I was excited to put more of them up again. Last year I dried a few large bucketfuls & fermented some (I didn’t really like the texture they ended up at).
I picked a large bucketful on Monday and half of it went into my steam juicer. I cut off the blossom end, stem and cut them in half. I used my knife tip to remove all the large seeds because I knew I wanted to use the mash that was left over. I let the steamer go until I had 7 cups of juice and I put it into the fridge because I’m not a fan of canning into the wee hours of the morning 
I love the beautiful color!
{Recipe} Crab Apple Jelly
(full USDA directions here)
7 cups crab apple juice
7 cups organic sugar
Start to heat up the juice and slowly stir in all the sugar to dissolve it. Bring the mixture up to a boil. Use a candy thermometer to watch when it’s at a full boil and let it go until the mixture is 8 degrees F above that temperature. Remove from heat, quickly skim off foam, and ladle into sterile, hot canning jars. Put on lids & rings and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes (for 5k’ elevation). Let cool and check seals.
A nice fruit butter with a little zing!
The steam juicer basket was full of beautifully mashed crab apples so I decided to make some crab apple butter with the remains. I ran the mash through my chinois to remove the skins and core pieces. Making 2 quarts of puree was enough of an arm workout so I stopped there
{Recipe} Crab Apple Butter
(adapted from Preserving in Today’s Kitchen)
2 quarts crab apple puree
4 Tbsp sucanat or organic sugar (add more if you want it sweeter)
1/8 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground coriander
Put all of the ingredients into a dutch oven or heavy bottomed pot and heat to a boil. Simmer until you reach your desired consistency. Put into jars, cool and freeze for later use.
* Note: I’m sure you could can this but I didn’t feel like it.
I plan on drying a few batches of crab apples again, I love snacking on them. If I get really motivated I might make a crab apple marmalade that was also in the Preserving book linked to above & some pancake syrup.
How do you put up crab apples?
We don’t mess with the seeds. Stan likes to do the crabs and he will boil them, drain the juice through a cloth for jelly, then put the apples through a Foley food mill. Don’t those little red crabs make the best applesauce ever?