Re: need thoughts pectin

i went a whole season in alsaka making jelly from almost every berry available. i made highbush cranberries, lowbush cranberries, wild raspberries, red currents, black currents, cloudberries and crowberries. i did not make blueberry jelly, but i do remember hunting moose on the tundra and finding fermented frozen blueberries while dodging tussucks in the morning as we traveled by foot. they were like mini blueberry daiquiris. there were no salmonberries in my area.

these jellies were made with no added pectin. it is quite an art to get them to jell and not ruin the pectin with high temps. i got very good at it. i learned that there is more pectin in the green fruit so harvesting and mixing a few of those in really helped the jelly set up. the only ingredients in my jellies were berries, water and cane sugar.

most of the berries jelled well, the cranberries and the black currents being some of the best. true wild black current jelly is to die for. however there were two outstanding anomalies.





crow berries are little black berries from a ground-level plant that grows on the sides of hills where regular cranberries wont. they are almost tasteless and but for a couple of seeds are almost entirely liquid with no pulp and thin skin. they wont jell. they wouldnt jell under any circumstances(without adding pectin). i dont know what is in those berries, but i pectin is not one of the constituents. there must be some amazing medicinal quality to them still unknown to me.





the second was cloudberries. these are low bushes with broad leaves and a single large berry on top. they are the color of persimmons and taste a whole lot like apricots to me, with a kind of waxy film left on the tongue after eating. mixed with blackberries or dewberries they would make a fancy berry dish indeed.

but the thing that most impressed me about cloudberries was the pectin content. the first batch i made i treated them like raspberries and got a heck of a surprise - they set up like cement. i could have poured that jelly into sphere molds and made superballs. they have so much pectin that i decided to take advantage of the apricot flavor and cooked down some dried apricots and mixed that with the cloudberry juice for a very pleasant result. it jelled quite easily without added pectin.