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products made from dropped fruit

Dennis Bangham

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posted 4 years ago

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Does anyone have recipes for making something edible out of the early dropped fruit? I saw where some lady made Chutney out of hers but am unsure if it was early dropped fruit or almost ripe fruit.
any pickling ideas?

Other people may reject you but if you lie in the forest floor for long enough the moss and fungi will accept you as one of their own!

Megan Palmer

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posted 4 years ago

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Under ripe windfall apples are excellent for making jelly and/or home made vinegar. Under ripe peaches, plums etc wouldn't be as good for chutney as it would be quite difficult to remove the stones/pits.

There's a japanese preserved plum recipe where the plums are brined using a special variety of plum that is sour when fully ripe but could be made with under ripe fruit - not that I've personally tried that.

What fruit are you growing?

Lana Weldon

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posted 4 years ago

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what about eating apples that are on the ground, they actually taste the best. Apples on the tree are very often still unripe.
There is a joke among fruitarians, about Adam and Eve: they should not have eaten the picked apple from the tree, but should instead have eaten one from the ground, and that was the reason they were thrown out of the garden lol
Well anyway, I can say that concerning some fruits (not all of course), dropped ones taste the best. But there could be a bit of alcohol content in some.

Dennis Bangham

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posted 4 years ago

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We have Asian Pears, Asian Persimmons, Asian Plums and Pluots and Jujube.
Your ideas sound interesting. Thanks

Other people may reject you but if you lie in the forest floor for long enough the moss and fungi will accept you as one of their own!

Dennis Bangham

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posted 4 years ago

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These are early dropped fruit and not developed or even near ripe. Trees seem to be self thinning.

Other people may reject you but if you lie in the forest floor for long enough the moss and fungi will accept you as one of their own!

Lana Weldon

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posted 4 years ago

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I remember the nice jujube trees when travelling in Asia, they are great because they keep well and dont spoil easily, and there was very alsways a huge bounty under the trees, not sure why no one else was interested?

Dennis Bangham

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posted 4 years ago

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They may have been the rootstock variety (Z. Spinosa). Small and sour but great to graft too and the seeds are viable.

Other people may reject you but if you lie in the forest floor for long enough the moss and fungi will accept you as one of their own!

Kendra Williams

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posted 4 years ago

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There's always wine! I found a company that freeze dries fruit and sells it. Its called therottenfruitbox.com. Look on their site for ideas they share.
Dehydrating would be good enough for your own use i think.

Tereza Okava

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posted 4 years ago

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I use early plums (unripe) to make Japanese plum wine and pickled plums. Can't get the proper type of not-sweet plums so I just go with the first "normal" ones of the year that are not ripe and hard as rocks.
I do something similar to this recipe https://www.justonecookbook.com/plum-wine/ , using vodka and often plain white sugar (instead of the recommended rock sugar). I do it by weight and often just eyeball.

S Tonin

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posted 4 years ago

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I used some green plums (and some riper yellow ones in a different batch) to make maesil-cheong, a Korean plum syrup. Here's Maangchi's recipe:

Edit: Here's the progress of mine so far:

20210727_141226.jpg

Nancy Reading

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posted 1 month ago

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We've had an unusual summer storm here which has blown a lot of my apples off the tree - one of them had really been looking good! So these are pretty large apples, but at least a month early. I think they should have been eating apples if they were ripe, I'm not sure what variety.
Anyone else got ideas other than chutney? I've got about 8 or 9 pounds unprocessed I think. Can I just use them in any recipe instead of cooking apples? What risks are there to consider?

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Timothy Norton

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posted 1 month ago

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Has anyone tried to make fruit leather out of the drops?

This might be best paired with utilizing the fruit pulp after processing apples for juice.

My fruit drops end up going to my chickens usually. Otherwise the local groundhogs and squirrels tend to keep the ground clean.

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S Tonin

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posted 1 month ago

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Nancy Reading wrote: What risks are there to consider?

I don't know if it's a risk, but the apples might be really astringent, so it might limit what you can do with them.

I was thinking of a pickle; I feel like one time a bunch of years ago I made pickled apple slices (kind of like a bread and butter/ sweet pickle if I'm remembering right). I googled for a recipe and this isn't what I made, but it still looks like it could be interesting: Green Apple Pickle

You could add some to a cabbage ferment like kraut or kimchi.

I don't know what the pectin content might be like, but you could juice them and let it reduce in a crock pot until you've got something that's kind of like glue and use it to add to preserves or, if it's sweet enough, use like molasses (apfelkart or something like that, I've never had it but saw it being made on a german show).

Nancy Reading

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posted 1 month ago

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I thought I'd cook some of my apples and just see what they taste like.

I made an apple pie:

Tastes yummy! and didn't need much sweetening. I think I can use these for any recipe using cooking apples. I never have enough chutney, so I think that is what I will do with the rest.

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Ac Baker

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posted 1 month ago

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Glad to hear that when storms gave you windfall apples, you were able to make pudding & chutney!

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Jay Angler

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Windfalls also work well in apple crisp (although I admit that between the deer and the geese, they take care of most of the windfalls!)

Last year my son cut up a bunch of apples and we froze them and used them in apple crisp in the winter. The problem with using frozen apples is that a lot of the juice comes out while thawing. I poured off the juice, but the fruit in the casserole dish, mixed up the juice with some tapioca powder (available in our local Asian grocery store) and poured it over the apples before adding the topping.

We also make lots of apple sauce and use it with things like pancakes.

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Nancy Reading

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posted 1 month ago

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Thanks Jay! I had to look up apple crisp - it appears to be apple crumble made with oats in the topping. I do this normally with my crumbles and hadn't realised it had it's own name!

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S Tonin

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Jay Angler wrote:We also make lots of apple sauce and use it with things like pancakes.

I can't believe that in my entire 45 years, I never thought to put applesauce on pancakes. Or use it in the batter, since I've made tons of applesauce cakes. Guess I know what I'm having for dinner.

Ac Baker

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As far as I can tell, the use of a 'streusel topping' for stewed fruit is first documented in English in 1917!?

The only difference between 'crisps' and 'crumbles' seems to be geography: Using only flour, or rolled oats with flour, are standard variations for either?

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Jay Angler

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Nancy Reading wrote: I had to look up apple crisp - it appears to be apple crumble made with oats in the topping. I do this normally with my crumbles and hadn't realised it had it's own name!

Apple Crisp

1 cup oats
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sunflower seeds (or another nut/seed)
1/2 brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon

mix up everything except the butter, then cut it in however you make pastry.
fill the pan with chopped fruit/berries, put the topping on, then...
Bake 350F for 30-40 minutes

I often add blackberries or blueberries to apples for some extra colour.
I also quadruple the recipe and store the extra in the freezer so I can make it quickly when fruit lands in my lap. I consider it healthy enough to be breakfast!

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Nancy Reading

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Jay Angler wrote: I also quadruple the recipe and store the extra in the freezer so I can make it quickly when fruit lands in my lap.

That, my friend, is a genius idea!

The apple chutney turned out fine; a little well set compared to my normal results. I had a little issue with the fruit drying on the surface of the pan in the oven, so I cooked it rather longer than it needed. However it tastes OK and I actually quite like the firmer set.

edit: chutney based on this recipe https://permies.com/t/1667/Recipies-Unusual-Permaculture-Plants#1241668

IMG_7975.JPG

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Douglas Alpenstock

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I have large volumes of small apples /crabapples on many trees, coming ripe all at once.

The "rough stuff" of drop apples is being chopped up and dried for training tools -- a good neighbour is training rescue horses for re-homing. This is actually an opportunity and motivation to tune-up various large kitchen blades that are sitting in the bin. Now there is a purpose!

I also have nicer crabby apples being sliced and dried for people food. This is a project in process -- I think they taste good, and my hounds agree.

I am concerned about the amount of high quality food that is wasted because people (mostly urban) cannot imagine such a simple system.

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