I was gifted some lemons by a co-worker and wanted to try to make the Ball Tart Lemon Jelly recipe.
I weighed out a pound and a half of lemons, which actually ended up being more like 5 lemons at 1 lbs 9 oz, as opposed to 6 lemons.
I then proceed to peel them, carefully avoiding the pith, and that yields only about 3/4 cup of rind so I peel a 6th and that gets it closer to the 1 cup it calls for.
I start then to realize that there’s no way these lemon innards are going to equate to 4 cups of juice and guts. But I then cut off the outer pith and discard as it says and am left with more like ~1.5 cups of guts, far less than the stated 4 cups it recommends.
I feel like these measurements are impossible, do I proceed with just my 1.5 cups of lemon guts and 1 cup of rind? I have a small thing of bottled lemon juice, should I add that to balance it out so it doesn’t become watered down or anything.
Is this possible? What should I do?
by GlassLotuses
3 Comments
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This recipe is interesting. So 1 cup rind, 4 cups lemon guts/juice, 1.5 cups water making 6.5 total cups all boiled covered for 15 minutes to get 2 cups total liquid?
I would keep going with what you currently have and see what you get after it sits overnight. If you are short of the two cups tomorrow then I would top off lemon juice.
Giving the recipe a quick read I suspect that’s a typo. There’s no way 750 grams of lemons is going to magically give you 1000 grams (4 cups) of liquid, especially after the rinds are peeled off. I’d look for another version of the recipe (perhaps a USDA version?), and see how they compare.
You could also halve the numbers for the remainder of the recipe, which seems more like it. Most jams and jellies have approximately 50:50 ratios of juice/fruit and sugar.