The end: dandelion jelly part 2

Dear reader,

“this is the end, beautiful friend”, as Jim Morrison sang with The Doors back then. But the end of one thing is also the beginning of another: in our case the end of cooking and the beginning of really yummy sweet-hearty jelly.

With a bit of delay now the last step for the jelly. For the last step you take a strainer and fill the brew in a measuring cup. You only need about 750 ml of it and don't need the flowers anymore. I am lucky: with two guinea pigs as my flatmates, I just give the flowers to the guinea pigs to eat.

The recipe says to add 2 table spoons of lemon juice. So far what I've done is cutting the lemon in two halves and just squeezed one half with my hand holding the hand above the pot. I'm not that exact with amounts here. (Sorry again for ml measurements, keep to the American cup-based recipe from my previous post, if that's how you cook.)

2. Give 750 ml of the brew back into the pot, add the jelling sugar and a bit of lemon juice. Let it cook for 4 minutes, immediately fill it in the glasses. Put the lid on.

With American Youtube videos I saw that they had other lids than we have here. In America it's also common to disinfect the glasses and lids in a hot water bath. For me it's enough to have them washed clean.

Some want to fill the jam or jelly in hot washed glasses. Sometimes they want to turn the glasses upside down on the lid for a bit.

Do whatever you're used to, if you made jam or jelly respectively do whatever feels safe for you, if you're scared germs could get in the glasses. Personally I feel comfortable enough to just wash the glasses with dish detergent and water. I also don't turn my glasses upside down on the lid.

Generally they say that self-made jam or jelly is only edible for about a year. Don't panic, if you make it now in April and only eat it in May next year. It should be perfectly fine to eat then. As long as the jelly looks good and smells fine, it should be good to eat even more than a year after making it.

As you can see, the recipe is really simple. Almost the most time consuming thing is to pick the flowers. You really have to make sure, the peduncles are short enough. My jelly now got a bit bitter, because in my joy about dandelions, I had too much of the peduncle parts in it. (Maybe better to actually pick 200 flowers and pull the yellow petals out after all.) The jelly is not ruined or poisoned because of that. It just tastes a bit more like bitter orange jam. The bitter-tasting components are not dangerous. Those especially are great for tea if you have digesting problems. More on that in another post. I'll write more about other possibilities to use other parts of dandelions and other ways to use dandelion flowers, too. Also what you have to keep in mind when making dandelion tea. Dandelions are far more versatile than most of us suspect and healthy too!

Have fun cooking and enjoy eating the jelly!

Until next blog,

sarah