This Feijoa jelly is one of several Feijoa recipes in this series of posts.
Recipe
Juice extraction
Top and tail Feijoas and cut down the middle to make sure they are ‘sound’. Place the halves in a big pressure cooker pot and just cover them with boiling water. Bring up to pressure and simmer for about 20 min. Alternatively, simmer for 1 hour in a normal pot.
Tip the extracted Feijoa juice through a ‘pantyhose leg filter’. mounted in a cereal canister, as shown below. Mash the remaining Feijoa flesh with a potato masher and transfer the mash to the filter.
Most of the remaining juice in the mash can be eventually squeezed out. I am impatient and like to squeeze out the juice while the mix is hot. Consequently, I use a light plastic cutting board that is folded in two. I put the pantyhose filter within it and scrape downwards while squeezing inwards with my thumb opposing my fingers (like milking a cow) and the juice can be collected easily in the open ‘cereal storage canister’.
“A little word of encouragement. When I first made this jelly I was disappointed with the lack of clarity of the extract (it was not going to win a prize at the Warragul Show!) and decided to filter it through a finer cloth mounted in a rather unstable funnel. In the process, I managed to spill most of the extract as I unsuccessfully attempted multi-tasking. Anyway, the portion of extract that survived the spill became very clear after heating in the next step while I cleaned up the mess. So have faith!”
Making the jelly
Add sugar to the extract in the proportion of 5 kg Feijoa extract to 2.5 kg sugar and juice of 4 large lemons. Start heating rapidly and stir in the sugar until it dissolves. Cut back the heat as soon as foaming starts. Start ‘set testing’ on a cold plate when the foam turns to scum and start to stick to the pot wall.
During cooking, I use a large silicone spatula ‘smudge’ the white foam scum up onto the side of the pot and then periodically scrape it off and put it in a teacup.
When suitably gelled or thickened, transfer the hot jell into twist cap glass jars (filling close to the top). Screw the lid on securely and invert the jar to sanitise the lid.
Note: Sometimes the jell does not form, but the alternative Feijoa ‘honey’ that forms (as shown in the photo) is still very nice.
Tim
gge
Hi Catriona, It was nice to have a closer look around your garden today. Now that is the cloudiness sorted out, but why do some brews Jell and others go like honey? They both taste good.
Tim
The cloudiness in fruit jellies and marmalade is generally due to squeezing your fruit pulp to force the rate of through put. The clearest jellies result from just letting it drip through until it’s finished. Not a job for the impatient
Lovey chatting to you today.
Cheers