Mint jelly

Mint is known to take over a garden, its roots burrowing underground and suddenly appearing just where you don’t want it. This is the answer, a homemade mint jelly to accompany your Sunday roast lamb! A very easy recipe with no straining through muslin required!

From my mother's recipe book -

1-2 kg of apples, washed, cored and sliced (no need to peel) - I used Bramley apples

450g granulated sugar - measure according to the amount of apple liquid once strained

600ml cider vinegar per kg of apples

(I did as my mother suggested and used 300ml water and 300ml vinegar)

1-2 tablespoons of finely chopped mint

Put your prepared apples into a saucepan with the liquid and cook slowly until tender.

When the apples are cooked, spoon them into a fine sieve over a large bowl. Let this sit for up to an hour until all the juice is through.

Don’t be tempted to push it through the sieve or your jelly will be cloudy

While the juice from the apples is dripping into the bowl, finely chop the mint. Then measure the liquid into a saucepan and add 450g sugar for each 600ml of juice. Boil for 8-10 minutes and test for set. See my post on 'All you need to know about making jam' for instructions on how to do this.

If it’s ready, stir in the finely chopped mint – 1 tablespoon per 600ml of jelly.

Spoon the jelly into jars (you will get 3-4 small jars from 1kg of apples) and store. As the recipe says, it will keep indefinitely given a chance!

1kg of apples will give you approximately 400ml of strained juice so if you want to make a few jars to gift to friends, I would recommend doubling or tripling the quantities.

While mint jelly is perfect for your Sunday roast, I've also added it to my pea and mint soup for that extra hint of mint.