How To Make Crab Apple Jelly

Making homemade crab apple jelly is a fun project I look forward to doing with my kids each summer. We have several wild crabapple trees that grow around my yard and in local area parks.

Besides being beautiful spring trees full of pinks, reds, and whites, the crabapple also produces a lot of nectar for the local bees early in the summer as well as a bitter fruit later toward the fall. These small, bitter apples are what we pick to make our jelly.

It is amazing how different the flavors and colors can be from tree to tree. We experimented with our local trees and definitely have our favorites for making jelly.

Watch below how we make our Crab Apple Jelly.

Instructions for Crabapple Jelly

Pick and prepare the crabapples

The first step is picking enough crab apples to make a batch of jelly. Crabapples are small and we don’t spray these trees so only about every third apple is usable. It takes a little bit longer than expected to get enough apples. But once you do, the rest is a breeze.

This recipe uses Certo Sure-Jell. It’s always a good idea to use publish, tested recipes when you are preserving. The Certo brand recipes are very easy to follow.

Boil the Crabapples

Dice the apples and bring them to a boil in just enough water so that the top layer of crabapples sticks out.

Then simmer in a pot until it turns to mush. This will take about 20 minutes.

After it has been cooked a bit, strain the juice out using a jelly bag. In subsequent batches, we used a food mill to get rid of the larger chunks before using the jelly bag and saves a lot of time. I highly suggest this tip as it made the whole process go much faster. But expect this to take a couple of hours. Don’t squeeze the bag to get the juice out. You will lose some to the pulp. Squeezing causes the bag to drip fine solids out into the juice making it cloudy.

Prepare Jars

Sanitized jars in a water bath and set them in the oven until needed. We also kept the lids in simmering water as well.

Make the Crabapple Jelly

Mix 5 cups of the juice with 7 1/2 cups of sugar and bring it to a rolling boil. Stir one minute and then add the pectin. Bring to a boil once more stir for an additional minute.