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.Extracting Juice for Jelly

Source of Recipe

From "Blue Ribbon Canning" by Linda J Amendt


List of Ingredients

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Recipe

"The fruit used to make jellies should be peeled, pitted, and crushed or finely chopped. The peels can give the extracted juice a bitter or earthy taste, so it's best to remove them before juicing the fruit. Never purée fruit when making jellies; doing so blends the fruit pulp and juice together rather than allowing the juice to separate from the fruit pulp. Jellies made from puréed fruits will be very cloudy.

To extract the juice, gently cook the fruit until very soft to release the juice. Strain the fruit and juice through a fine-mesh sieve lined with damp, fine-knit cheesecloth or in a damp jelly bag placed over a large bowl. This process can take time and should not be rushed — the juice needs to drain slowly to prevent it from turning cloudy. If you force the juice through the cheesecloth or squeeze the jelly bag, the juice will retain tiny pieces of fruit pulp and cause the finished jelly to be opaque and cloudy instead of crystal clear.

To speed the process, you can strain the fruit mixture through a fine-mesh sieve first to remove the bulk of the fruit pulp from the juice before straining through the cheesecloth. If the cheesecloth fibers become clogged with pulp, pour the unstrained fruit mixture into a container, rinse the cheesecloth or jelly bag to clean the fabric, and resume the straining process through the cleaned fabric."