Two Crabapple Recipes: Crabapple Jelly and Butter
Here’s a scenario I’m sure you all have experienced- ever come home from a little light foraging with a pound of crabapples, and after browsing crabapple recipes find yourself conflicted on what to make? You could make clear, bright, and sweet crabapple jelly, but there’s also smooth, thick, silky, spiced crabapple butter. You have to pick one- or do you? This one pot, 4 ingredient, easily scalable recipe creates the perfect, bright red, no-pectin added crabapple jelly and a cardamom flavored crabapple butter from the same single batch of crabapples. Perfect for some autumnal gift giving, and morning toast on sharp, crisp mornings.
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Foraging Crabapples
The first time I made crabapple butter and jelly was a few years ago, when I harvested perfect red crabapples from a neighbors tree. These crabapples where pristine, sparkling little cherry-like fruit, each fruit approaching the maximum two inch diameter that defines it as a crabapple. The crabapple jelly I made was amazing, but after those beautiful fruit, how could it not be? This year I foraged for crabapples on a little trail, about 100 feet from my house. I noticed it after a falling crabapple hit me right on my head, and came back a few days later to pick. I quickly discovered the quickest way to fill my basket was to shake the tree and let the apples fall, and then volunteer my boyfriend to help to scoop the fruit from the ground. These weren’t the sparkling, faultless fruits from the manicured lawn- they had bumps, bruises, dirty patches, scars- but the jelly they made was just as good as the prettier fruit.
Identifying Crabapples
Disclaimer: When foraging wild plants, you are responsible to verify beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have positively identified that plant. While I take responsibility for the accuracy of the information on this site, I can not take responsibility for the identification of the plants you’ve foraged. Please consult multiple resources (books, websites, and human experts) to verify the identification of your edible plant.
Crabapples are the smaller, tarter cousins of our supermarket favorites. By definition, a crabapple is less than 2 inches in diameter, and are often more sour than their bigger, domesticated apple cousins. There are thousands of varieties of crabapple, but here are a few tips for identifying them. Crabapples grow on trees (usually 15-30 ft. high) with pointed oval, alternate, serrated leaves that transition from light green to darker green, and then brown or red from Spring to Fall. Keep an eye out in Spring for the white and pink flowers that grow on crabapple and apple trees. The fruit grow in clusters, and have stems like a cherry, with sepals at the end and ripen to be red or yellowish.
Looking for Apple Goodness? Try one of these Apple Recipes!
- Roasted Chestnut Crabapples and Kabocha Squash
- Vegan Scones with Raspberry Apple Compote
- Almond, Oat and Vegan Apple Cookies
- Easy Vegan German Apple Cake
- Vegan Stuffing with Mushrooms and Apples
- Easy 4-Ingredient Filo Maple Vegan Apple Tart
Two Crabapple Recipes for the Apples of One!
I’ve been obsessing over this recipe, because I just find it SO COOL that from one batch of crabapples we’ve made two spreads. One little batch of crabapples has enough goodness in it to make not only a batch of crabapple jelly, but also a batch of crabapple butter. It just really blows my mind. It occurred to me while browsing crabapple recipes that most crabapple jelly recipes include the instruction “dispose of the solids” after boiling the apples for a while, and inversely most crabapple butter recipes require the apples be boiled to soften them. It is just so easy to make both at once! Waste not, want not. I don’t think I can actually express how cool I think this whole “two for one” crabapple recipe is, but let it be known my making-something-from-nothing, thrifty, cute-matching-set-loving, waste-reducing self is geeking out about this one. A few other benefits- this whole process (aside from canning) is a one-pot adventure. Both recipes use just 4 ingredients between the two of them. Our jelly doesn’t use any added pectin- apples are naturally high in pectin, so it’s not needed (fun fact, most pectin on the shelves is actually derived from apples!).
Making Crabapple Butter and Crabapple Jelly
2 recipes, 1 pot, 4 ingredients, let’s go! Start by washing your crabapples and removing the stems. Most recipes for crabapple butter or jelly have you remove the sepal or blossom end of the crabapple, but I really am a lazy cook, and if I can not do a step I won’t. So I didn’t, and it was perfectly fine, but do what makes you comfortable. Bring the apples to a simmer with some water for 15 minutes- you don’t really want to let it go longer as you can damage the pectin that gets extracted as you simmer. Next you will strain the liquids from the solids- to make a really clear, beautiful jelly, use gravity to help you. I used a nut milk bag, but you can also get a jelly bag, or try a double layer of cheesecloth. Hang the bag with fruit and let all the liquid drip out. The liquid will be cooked with sugar for 15 minutes to become your jelly, and the solids will go through a food mill to become the butter. A food mill, for those of you not in possession of one, is a great old fashioned tool that simultaneously grinds up an ingredient while pushing it through a sieve to separate the peels from the pulp. After a good go through your food mill, we did throw away the skins, and the pulp is slowly and gently cooked down into a thick apple butter.
Two Crabapple Recipes: Crabapple Jelly and Butter
This simple, 4 ingredient recipe uses the same set of crabapples to first create a no-pectin crabapple jelly, and then a silky, cardamom crabapple butter.
Ingredients
- 1 lb. crab apples, cleaned with stems removed
- 1 cup sugar
- ½ cup sugar (you may want up to 3/4 cup if you prefer a sweeter crabapple butter)
- ½ tsp. cinnamon
- ¼ tsp. cardamom
Instructions
- First make your jelly. Place the apples in a saucepan, and cover with one cup of water. Bring to a boil, and reduce to a simmer. Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. The apples will start to fall apart a little, which is fine, but try not to smash them up too much. After 15 minutes, strain the apples and the liquid. I used a nut milk bag, and hung it from a cabinet for three hours, so that all the liquid fell down. Don’t squeeze the liquid out, as that will lead to a cloudy jelly.
- Set the solids aside, and return the liquid to a saucepan on the stove. Add the 1 cup sugar, and bring to a boil until the jelly reaches 220°F (105°C). (Note- this only applies to people living around sea-level. If you live at a higher altitude or do not have a thermometer, please see this guide for other methods for testing if your jelly is ready). This should take around 15 minutes.
- If not canning, pour into any desired container, allow to cool, and place in the fridge. If you do plan on canning, pour into a sterilized canning jar, leaving ¼ inch headroom. Can in a hot water bath for 10 minutes, and cool for 12 hours, making sure to check they’ve sealed properly. 1 pound of apples should yield about 8 oz. of jelly.
- Start on the apple butter. You can use the same pot as the jelly (any leftover jelly will just incorporate into your butter), so less clean up! Use a food mill to extract as much pulp from the leftover apples as possible. I found that I was usually able to get 1 cup of applesauce from the original 1 lb. of crab apples. Bring the sauce to a simmer, and add the ½ cup sugar and spices, stirring well. Cook down slowly, stirring and scraping the bottom often, until it is thick and creamy (mine took around 30 minutes). If you are not canning, allow your apple butter to cool before placing it in a container in the fridge.
- If you are canning, place the crab apple butter in sterilized containers, taking care to remove as many air bubbles as you can and leaving ¼ inch headspace. Can in a hot water bath for 10 minutes, and cool for 12 hours, making sure to check they’ve sealed properly. 1 pound of apples should yield about 8 oz. of butter.
Notes
This recipe is meant to be easily scaled to the amount of crabapples you forage. Simple multiply all the ingredients in the recipe by the number of pounds of crabapples you have. I found that as I increased the recipe, the yield went up a little, so if you’re going to be making several batches worth make sure you have a few extra canning jars on hand.
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