Saturday I made Spiced Crabapples...there are probably enough on the tree to make 15-16 quarts...but I only did three...lots of sugar to add. I planted this tree for the birds, but so far they are not intrested in eating bitter fruit...they prefer the fig tree.
The recipe is on
http://www.cooks.com just enter spiced crabapples. The end result is..you do not want the apples to pop...that is pretty much impossible as you can see. We will try these in a few months after they have had time to absorb all the spices. The recipe is very simple, quick and easy. The recipe calls for mace...I have never used it nor did I know where it came from
http://www.thespicedepot.com/spice-notes/Mace/ Check it out...it's the outer cover of the nut called nutmeg...which I love..so I am thinking these pickled crabapples should be pretty good. The only problem with canning crab apples is...they lose the pretty color. Does anyone know how to preserve the color?
haven't used it for crabapples but a common ingredient used to avoid oxidization and browning in brewing and vinting is Potassium Metabisulfite (the "sulfites" referred to on wine bottles). This is also used in canned and bottled food preparation. metabisulfite (both sodium and potassium) is available at beer and winemaking supply stores - there is likely one near you; most areas have em.
ReplyDeleteOther than that google "sulfite" plus the words Preserving OR canning (etc) and you should see discussion on how to use sulfites in regular food preparation.
Besides avoiding oxidization by using sulfites, also adding some red food color at the same time should do the trick, combined.