My parents were in town last weekend and I thought a fun activity to do with mom would be making jelly. Strawberries are still reasonably cheap and after my massive jam success what could go wrong?
I processed a lot of strawberries just like I did in the previous jam job. For jelly, you take cut up fruit and cook it down a little to help get the juice flowing. After about 5 minutes of boiling the strawberry slurry was looking just right.
The next step is to strain the cooked mush through a jelly strainer, then proceed with the strained product just like you would for a jam. This is were the disaster came in. I neglected to tie the strainer. A healthy pouring of strawberry slurry turned into a huge mess. The bag slipped through its retaining ring and fell into the bowl. Hot strawberry sludge went everywhere including on me. I got a few burns and my kitchen looks like a murder scene.
Luckily I wasn’t hurt badly, and everyone helped clean up. We poured everything back in the pot, tied the bag securely and restarted the straining process. It went reasonably well after that. For an afternoon of work I got 5 jars of gorgeous ruby strawberry jelly, some burns, and a cleaned kitchen. Interesting experience, but jam is less work and has higher yields. Still though, look at this jelly!
Kilted Craft Works 