By adding gelling agents to the jam, we make it denser, but not overly sweet. Gelatin allows you to make even berries that are not very pectinous, such as cherries, jelly-like and thick, with a small amount of another thickener - sugar. That is why jam with the addition of agar-agar or gelatin can be called low-calorie. Today we will talk about how to cook cherries in jelly for the winter, and give recipes with gelatin.
Features of preparing cherries in jelly for the winter
There are several recommendations for preparing berries for canning:
- Before cooking, they must be rinsed well, replacing the water several times and gently mixing with your hands in a basin. You need to wash it with clean water.
- Some people like to make jam with pits, but jelly is usually made from peeled cherries. Therefore, you need to arm yourself with a special kitchen device for removing seeds or take at least an old hairpin.
- Cherry juice splashes when peeling cherries, causing stains. They can be easily washed off your hands in water acidified with vinegar.
Recipe Ingredients Required
Jelly for the winter is prepared from a minimum of products - sugar, fruits and gelatin. Some recipes call for water for the syrup. Sometimes they contain various additives that enrich the taste of the product. You can use brown sugar, this will also make the taste interesting.
Specifics of product selection
Jelly is stronger in those canned foods that contain more pectin. And pectin is found in large quantities in unripe cherries. Therefore, for jelly it is better to choose berries with green stalks.
Darkened stalks indicate that the cherry is sweet and tasty, but overripe for jelly.
When choosing fruits, you need to smell them - slightly over-stale, stale cherries will give off the smell of wine and acid. Don’t take it - it can ruin the entire preparation and simply ferment even after heat treatment.
Finally, cherries can be quite often wormy.
If the lesion is single, then the worms can be removed by simply soaking the fruit in salted water. Let it sit for a while, the worms will come out and they can be removed.
If the cherry is very wormy, you should not cook it.
How to prepare the container?
With containers, everything is simple - the jelly is boiled in an ordinary basin or flat-bottomed pan with thick walls.The finished product is poured into sterilized jars and sealed with clean, boiled lids.
Cooking process
The beauty of this preparation is that it does not cook for long, which means that the cherries retain many useful substances. Of course, there will be a minimum of vitamin C, but valuable vitamin A, PP, and minerals will remain. For the same reason, the bright color of the jam will remain.
Now in detail the recipe for cooking with regular gelatin. Required:
- 2 kg sugar;
- 0.5 kg granulated sugar;
- 35 g gelatin;
- 250 ml of clean water.
Let's prepare it like this:
- Prepare the cherries by removing the pits.
- Place in a saucepan and add sugar.
- Pour gelatin with water in a separate bowl and leave it to swell.
- Place over low heat until the cherries release juice and begin to boil.
- Boil for 5 minutes, then pour gelatin into it and stir.
- Place in jars and close.
The second recipe is designed to use instant gelatin. We take:
- 2 kg of peeled cherries;
- 1.4 kg sugar;
- 8 spoons of quick gelatin.
We do this:
- Mix gelatin with sugar.
- We clean, sprinkle with sugar and gelatin and leave overnight to release the juice.
- In the morning, put the berries on the fire, wait for them to boil, then stir and boil for three minutes.
- Transfer the hot jelly into prepared jars and seal.
Further storage of workpieces
The jelly is stored in a cool place - a refrigerator or cellar. In principle, well-cooked jelly can be kept in an ordinary apartment, but then it will not have a durable, dense appearance.
Please note that the gelling process continues for several days after cooking. So even not very thick jelly, perhaps, after standing in the refrigerator, will become ideal in density and appearance.
