Jaci can cook ... lemonade lemon jelly

The lemonade lemon is thought to be a hybrid variety, a cross between a lemon and a mandarin and low in acid.

The low acid content means that a lemonade lemon is not suitable for preserving over fruit, using in jam as the setting agent or in lemon water to prevent fruit such as apples and pears from browning.

It is a lemon sweet enough to eat.

I’m not sure how many lemonade lemons were used in this recipe, but it was a lot.

For this recipe, you will need to have a jelly bag.

You can purchase jelly bags from brewing shops, either in person or online.

They are called cloth hop and grain muslin strainer bags and can be used to drain your brew during the beer brewing process.

Don’t limit yourself to just lemonade lemons for this recipe.

You can make this lemonade lemon jelly from other citrus fruits, such as true lemons, oranges and grapefruits.

I have a suspicion that this recipe would be suitable for the other not true lemon, the Meyer lemon (which is a lemon mandarin cross as well).

For this recipe, 12 jars of lemonade jelly were prepared from an unspecified number of lemonade lemons, then covered with 5 litres of water.

Lemonade Lemon Jelly Recipe

Ingredients

Method

1. Wash your lemons, then cut or pull off the stalks and any damaged fruit.

It is likely that if you are using store-bought lemons, someone else has already removed the stalks for you.

2. Roughly chop the lemons so that the pieces fit more easily into your food processor. Place in the bowl of your food processor.

3. Process until the lemons are all roughly chopped up. For this recipe, the smaller the pieces, the more flavour that can be drawn out of the fruit.

4. Place the chopped lemons into a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for an hour or two.

This is where you would use your discretion as to whether the lemon and water mixture has cooked long enough, with enough of the juice and flavour drawn out of it.

5. Scald a jelly bag with boiling water, then fill with the lemon and water mixture. Hang the jelly bag over a bucket and allow the mixture to drain into the bucket overnight. You will need to devise a method that suits you to accomplish this.

Here I place the jelly bag into a large metal sieve, securing it with metal clothes pegs. The jelly bag is scalded once in place over the sink, then placed on a large plastic bucket to hold the fruit.

The bucket with the fruit is placed in the fridge overnight to drain the liquid.

6. The next day, measure how much liquid you have by volume. On this day, there were 3.3 litres of liquid.

For every 100ml of liquid, you will need 75g of white sugar. For 3.3 litres of liquid, this was equivalent to 2.475kg of sugar.

You will have a large amount of pulp left in the jelly bag. The most common thing to do with the leftover pulp is to discard it or feed it to the chooks.

Because it was slightly sweet, and none of us can bear to see any waste, once the pulp was drained, it could be used to make lemon-flavoured fruit leather, minimising the waste.

But that is a story for another day.

7. Place the liquid in a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Once the liquid has boiled, add the required amount of sugar.

Boiling the liquid first is crucial, as it helps the lemon become clear and prevents it from becoming cloudy.

This step is essential for achieving the perfect texture and appearance of your lemonade jelly.

After adding the sugar, return the mixture to a boil, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.

It’s essential to limit the amount you stir the jelly to minimise cloudiness. Excessive stirring can introduce air into the mixture, resulting in a cloudy jelly.

8. Bottle.

After tasting the jelly, it will be beautiful on top of pancakes.

Share your jelly secrets with Jaci and the rest of the community. Your unique recipes and tips are always welcome at jaci.hicken@mmg.com.au