Mint Jelly
An apple jelly with mint, different from anything you can buy — and it manages without jam sugar: the setting comes from the pectin in the apples themselves, which is why they are cooked with skin and cores. That is where most of it sits.
Which is also why the recipe cannot give a fixed amount of sugar: first you extract the juice and measure it, and only then add sugar at 700 g per litre. How much juice two kilos of apples give depends on the apples.
It goes with lamb, with cheese and — as the original intends — with pancakes and waffles.
For the vivid green that people associate with mint, add colouring at the end of cooking; without it, the jelly has a far more natural golden amber tone.
Ingredients
- 2 kg green apples
- Sugar (700 g per litre of juice obtained)
- Juice of 1 lemon
- A handful of fresh mint leaves
- Green food colouring (optional)
Method
- 1
Cut the apples up and put them in a pan with skin and cores: that is where the pectin is that sets the jelly later.
- 2
Add twice their volume of water and put them on the heat.
- 3
Cook until the apples have fallen apart and the liquid has reduced by half.
- 4
Take off the heat, cover and leave to sit in the fridge until the next day.
- 5
Pass through a sieve to recover the liquid. Do not press the pulp against the sieve: what gets squeezed through clouds the jelly.
- 6
Put the liquid back on the heat, bring it to the boil and cook for 10 minutes.
- 7
Measure the liquid and work out 700 g of sugar per litre.
- 8
Put both into the pan and add the lemon juice and the mint leaves.
- 9
Cook to setting point: put a drop on a cold plate and push it with your finger — if it wrinkles instead of running, it is ready. Take the mint leaves out, add the colouring if you are using it, and pot up hot into sterilised jars.