Today I made my own apple pectin. Yes, you can buy this in the store for a few dollars, but my goal is to make jams from local and organic produce. By making my own pectin, I can control the source and exact amount of pectin in my jams. It is also cheaper — especially if you can find discounted unripe damaged apples (aka “windblown” apples) at a local farm. Potential problems with using homemade pectin include 1) running out of it mid-way through the year 2) making everything taste like apples and 3) not achieving as good or as reliable a consistency as the store-bought stuff. We’ll see…
Here’s how I made the apple pectin:
Chop apples very roughly, keeping the skin, core, and seeds; and add 2 tbl lemon juice and enough water to cover the apples. Ideally, I’d use crab apples or unripe tart apples. It is winter, however, so I bought 7 big organic granny smith apples in the supermarket. I have no idea when they were picked. I covered them with 6 cups of water.
Cook apples and water for 45 minutes until it looks like this.
Strain for 12 hours. I am using several layers of cheesecloth inside a colander over a pot.
The next morning, I test the pectin to see if it is strong enough to gel. To do this, I mix a tablespoon each of rubbing alcohol and apple pectin in a small cup. If it strongly gels (sits on a fork) then I’m good to go. If not, then I need to boil it down to reduce the water content. As you can see from the photo at left, my pectin was slightly gelled, but dripped through the fork very easily.
After boiling it down ~25% (as measured by a marked wooden skewer), I test again. Because the test only works with cool pectin, I put a small cup of the reduced pectin in the freezer for a few minutes. Still thin. After boiling it down slightly more than 50% I achieve a thick gel (see photo at left). I’m guessing that less boiling is needed (and, therefore, a better yield is obtained) if you are able to find unripe apples, which have a lot more pectin per apple.
Here are two photos of before-boiling and after-boiling pectin. Note the color change from a pale yellow to a dark orange. Some sticky foam accumulated on the surface during boiling. I skimmed this off during the boiling process. The 7 large apples gave me just over 2 cups (2 half-pints) of reduced pectin. [In case you’re curious, the homemade pectin did end up costing ~70% as much as the store-bought liquid pectin (by the oz) — and this ratio could obviously be improved if I bought in bulk and in season.]
I love that you are making your own pectin! I’m actually surprised at the potential cost savings. I really would have thought commercial pectins were cheaper. The fact that you can use apples that might otherwise go to waste is also good to know. It’s another way to make the best use of our local resources.
I like to make Seville Orange marmalade each year. About 100lbs or so. Getting the set right is hard as each year the oranges vary. Your home made pectin might help enormously and also cut costs. Will give it a try.
Thanks for the comment, Keith. I hope you do try the home made pectin. I love marmalades, and am hoping to experiment with them this summer. I’ll be sure to post about them when I do.
Hi Amy!
I’m chopping tomatoes to make tomato marmalade tomorrow, will leave them macerating tonight in the sugar. I can’t help but notice that you seem to have vacuum packed the pectin in a mason jar. Do you treat the pectin then as another canning process and then you can store the bounty? I made plum jam this year with a couple of my neighbours and I added cranberries to my set. I love making cranberry sauce for Turkey Day, I have a wonderful recipe that turns out just perfect and the flavour is out of this world. I know cranberries have an awful lot of pectin…could I use this method instead to get the pectin out of these berries?
I have been looking on the web to find out just how much natural pectin tomatoes have, but I find that there is almost on information of this. Tomato jam is something my Italian grandmother used to make for us, but the tomato marmalade is also right up there with Danish butter on a freshly baked baguette.
Any suggestions?
Hi Lourdes,
Thanks for reading! Yes, I can the pectin in the same way I can other jams. I store the vacuum-sealed jars of pectin in the cupboard, and then I use ~2/3 half-pint jar for a batch of jam (which usually gives 5 half-pints). I store the remaining 1/3 of the jar in the fridge until I make jam again. It will last a few weeks.
It’s a good question on the cranberries. I assume you could use the same process to make cranberry pectin, though I’ve never seen anyone do this. The pectin would taste like cranberries, though. The reason apples are usually used for homemade pectin (other than that they are high in pectin) is that they have a neutral taste and don’t dramatically affect the jam flavor.
And, another good question on tomatoes! Tomatoes are high in pectin — BUT the pectin breaks down very quickly once they are chopped or crushed unless they are heated. So, many tomato jam recipes will advise you to chop each tomato right before putting into a hot pot. The heat saves most of the pectin. If you are making a marmalade, though, then you are probably using citrus peel of some kind, which is also high in pectin.
Good luck with your tomato marmalade!
–Amy