Homemade pectin or not

So making your own pectin this is something I learned how to do when I went to a class about Marmalade at June Taylor in Oakland.

It was a great class because she focuses on strictly citrus. Of all kinds.








I really enjoyed the class. The one thing I did not like was no Pictures. No shit good! But that did not deter me from trying this new lesson at home. Always have cheese cloth on hand as jam maker. It will come in handy with so many of your recipes. 





So to start you take the pith , guts and seeds and all things you do not want in your jam. Put this into the cheese cloth. I double up the cheese cloth and tie it with some cooking twine.
Do not use the yellow part of the peel this is good for other uses. Like candied Peels.



How much you use is a good question June used 500 pounds in her 30 quart pot's. LOL large batch. I thought I made large batches but this is large. Just use all the pith stuff you have from the recipe you are making it is all relative. For my Orange Marmalade I got about 4 cups of pith and seed.

 

So you drop you bag of pith and seeds into your pot of boiling jam. Let the pouch simmer with your jam. Marmalade is a boiling point jam which is another subject.

The real fun is waiting for the bag to cool so you can squeeze it. I have gotten myself a pair of heavy duty rubber gloves so as to not have to wait as long anymore.But just put the bag in the freezer for 5 minutes it cools right off.






Squeeze the dickens out of it.










 These last few pictures are for you to see what you get for your time. I will usually squeeze the pectin right into the pot of cooking jam. So moving on I need to say this is something that some will love to do and others will just pick up a box of pectin. I go either way.




Remember that doing things from "Scratch" is always time consuming and needs to be time tested to get the job done the way you like it. DIY can always be improved on and comments are always a great way to learn. I have had people comment and correct me plenty of times Thank Gosh they do!


This is the squeezed to death bag of stuff

And here is the cup of natural pectin I got out of it. I usually like I said squeeze right into the jam and bring it back up to the gel point. If at first you do not succeed try try again.
I do all the time. Oh yes you can. Here is a good site on how to do this process with apples. Here is a site that makes large batch citrus pectin and last but not least here is an old school 1930's article turned modern for you information from Florida.