Making Pectin from Quince

I get a large, sturdy knife to cut these things; seeds, cores and all. All I do is rinse off the downey soft fuzz that covers them. They are a hard as stone so slicing them takes some muscle! When they are ripe they are a little easier to cut up, but not much!

This is all of the fruit cut up into random chunks with enough water poured over it to cover them. They smell alot like apples when they are cooking.

Now I let the fruit cook into the water for about 2 hours or until it is good and soft. I love the way it turns a beautiful pink color.

Here I have 3 sieves going at once, draining the juice into the bowls. I just bought 2 of these sieves at a yard sale last weekend. I guess that was pretty good timing! I saw a recipe on the internet that uses the pulp for some kind of desert dish. I forget what it was called. It looked like a good recipe, but unfortunately I had already discarded my pulp into the compost bin. Next year I will have to try this other dish.

I just let the fruit sit in the sieve until all the juices run out. I don't squeeze it or press it or anything. I just let it set.

Once I get the juice extracted from the pulp, I boil it down for about 45 min.

Then I cold pack it into jars. After all that hard work, I only got two pint jars. I am going to try mixing it with grapes to make grape jelly tomorrow. Supposedly, I can use it in place of pectin, so this will be an experiment. I hope that it works!