How To Make Rowan Jelly

Homemade Jam Recipes

Ingredients: Rowan Jelly Recipe

4 lb / 1,800 grams of ripe rowan berries (these should be relatively firm and not mushy)
White sugar (the amount will vary according to the juice extracted when cooking the berries)
24 fl oz / 700 ml of tap water
1 large lemon

Method - What To Do

Rowan berries certainly make an unusual and slightly bitter jelly, which is absolutely perfect to serve with roast venison or other game, rather like cranberry sauce is to turkey.

Pluck the berries from their stems, give them a quick wash and then place them into your jam making pan. Pour on the 700 ml of water and then squeeze in the juice of one large lemon. Allow the berries to boil and stir occasionally. Leave to simmer for around an hour and then turn the cooker off.

Pour your pulped rowan berries through a muslin bag or strainer to extract just the juice. Leave it dripping for at least three or four hours, or better still, overnight. When the juices have ceased their dripping, measure the collected liquid using a jug, and pour this extract back into the saucepan. For every 16 fl oz / 475 ml of berry juice that you have measured, weigh out and add 1 lb / 500 grams of the white sugar (caster or granulated is fine with all jelly recipes).

Place the saucepan onto a low heat and stir well as the liquid begins to warm up once more. By the time that it starts to bubble, all of the sugar should have been dissolved. Allow the rowan berry jelly to boil away for up to 15 minutes, until you feel that it is ready to set. Test this by spooning some onto a chilled plate and leave it for a minute. After the minute has passed, examine your jelly sample closely to see if it is setting, with a skin and a wobble. If this is clearly not happening and the sample remains rather runny, boil for a further five minutes and test again, and if necessary test once more in another five minutes.

After taking the pan from the heat, skim the rowan jelly and then pour straight into sterilised jars. Your glass jars can be sterilised in a number of ways, such as by boiling or heating through in an oven. However, running them through a hot cycle in a dishwasher is usually the easiest method and this is a more than adequate way to sterilise jam jars.

Rowan Jelly Recipe - More Jelly Recipes.