When crabapple trees start fruiting in late summer and fall, most people don’t know what to do with the tart little fruits other than let them litter the ground. But there are so many delicious ways to use crab apples!
Crab apples are the smaller, wild predecessors of our modern cultivated apples. They have an extremely tart, intense apple flavor that makes them ideal for certain cooked applications. Their high natural pectin content also makes them perfect for setting up jellies and jams.
While crab apples are typically too sour to enjoy raw, their dynamic flavor transforms into something special when cooked Don’t let all those crab apples from neighborhood trees and orchards go to waste this season Here are 18 creative ways to use up crab apples and savor their uniquely robust taste
1. Make Crab Apple Jelly
Crab apple jelly highlights the pure, concentrated flavor of crab apples. Their natural pectin allows the jelly to set up without having to add extra pectin. Crab apple jelly pairs wonderfully with savory meats For a basic crab apple jelly, simply simmer halved crab apples in water, strain out the juice, and boil with an equal amount of sugar
2. Craft Crab Apple Jam
Jams are a delicious way to use crab apples too. Cooking the crab apples down with sugar helps offset their intense tartness. Consider adding complementary flavors like vanilla herbs spices, or even cranberries to your crab apple jam recipes.
3. Press Crab Apples into Juice
Harness the dynamic flavor of crab apples by pressing them into juice. Use a blender or juicer to extract the liquid, then strain. Sweeten the juice to taste. Sip straight up or use as a base for jelly and cider.
4. Bake Crab Apples into Pies
Bake crab apples into the perfect old-fashioned pie. Their tartness balances well with sugars and spices. For best results, mix crab apples with sweeter apple varieties. Adapt your favorite pie crust and filling recipes.
5. Dehydrate Crab Apple Slices
Preserve the taste of fresh crab apples year-round by dehydrating thin slices in a food dehydrator or low oven. The chewy dried crab apple rings make a sweet-tart healthy snack. Rehydrate before using in recipes.
6. Create Crab Apple Fruit Leather
Puree crab apples into sauce then spread onto dehydrator trays to create tasty fruit leathers. Kids love these as an after-school snack. The concentrated flavor of crab apples makes for an especially robust fruit leather.
7. Infuse Crab Apples into Vinegar
Steep crab apples in vinegar to impart a wonderfully appley flavor. Crab apple vinegar is delicious drizzled over fresh salads. For best infusion, select a mildly flavored vinegar like white wine or champagne vinegar.
8. Craft Crab Apple Cider
Harness the dynamic tartness of crab apples to create a unique cider. Press or juice crab apples, optionally blending with sweeter apples, then ferment the juice with yeast. The resulting cider has layers of appley flavor.
9. Make Applesauce
Cook down chopped crab apples into a sweetened applesauce. Their tartness adds great complexity of flavor. Use a food mill or pass through a sieve to remove peels and cores. Eat plain or incorporate into recipes.
10. Transform into Crab Apple Butter
For an apple butter with more tang, use crab apples. Slow cook into applesauce then continue reducing into a thick, spreadable crab apple butter. The concentrated flavor is amazing on toast, biscuits, and muffins.
11. Pickle Crab Apples
Enjoy pickled crab apples as a condiment or snack. Their petite size makes them perfect for pickling whole. Use a brine of apple cider vinegar, sugar, and pickling spices. Pair the pickled crab apples with roasted meat or salads.
12. Make Crab Apple Chutney
Cook crab apples into a chunky chutney layered with spices, garlic, onions, and other vegetables. Spoon crab apple chutney over meats or stir into curries for an flavorful kick. The natural pectin helps the chutney thicken.
13. Bake into Cakes and Muffins
Swap out regular apples for crab apples when baking cakes, muffins, and quick breads. Their moist texture and tart flavor adds amazing complexity. Consider adding extra sugar or frosting to balance the tartness.
14. Craft Caramel Crab Apples
Make bite-sized caramel apples with crab apples! Melt caramel, dip whole crab apples to coat, then drizzle with chocolate and roll in chopped nuts or sprinkles. Kids will love these petite caramel treats.
15. Brew Crab Apple Tea
Dried crab apple rings make a wonderful herbal tea. Simply steep the dried rings in hot water for 15-20 minutes. Sweeten if desired. Sip crab apple tea on chilly autumn nights.
16. Create Crab Apple Syrup
Simmer crab apples into a sweet syrup perfect for drizzling over pancakes and ice cream. The simple syrup highlights the bright apple flavor. Infuse spices like cinnamon and clove for extra flair.
17. Ferment into Crab Apple Liqueur
Make your own delicious crab apple liqueur by steeping crab apples in vodka or brandy with sugar. Allow to infuse for 1-2 months. The resulting liqueur makes amazing cocktails and gifts.
18. Mix into Stuffing and Salads
Fresh crab apple slices add pleasant tartness and crunch when mixed into savory dishes like stuffing, fall salads, and grain bowls. Their small size makes them perfect for eating whole.
With their dynamic tart flavor, crab apples can elevate both sweet and savory recipes. Don’t let those prolific crab apples go to waste this season. Try out these 18 creative ways to fully enjoy the harvest! From jelly to caramel apples, crab apples prove endlessly versatile.
17 Uses for Crabapples
Don’t throw away all the crabapples in your yard or neighborhood. There are lots of ways to use them. Here are some creative suggestions to get you started!.
- Homemade Crabapple Pectin
Most jelly or jam recipes contain store-bought pectin to create the thickening needed. The naturally occurring substance pectin can be found in many fruits and berries. When mixed with sugar, it gives jams and jellies their thick, gel-like texture.
An alternative to commercial pectin is to make homemade crabapple pectin. Harvest underripe crabapples for this purpose. The more ripe a fruit is, the less pectin it contains.
Try making a batch of crabapple pectin when jelly season comes around and using that instead of the boxes from the store. It’s one easy way to cut the costs of your jelly and keep it natural.
Crabapples are naturally full of pectin. So, you don’t need any extra pectin to make crabapple jelly—just sugar to balance out the tartness of the crabapple.
Some people liken the taste of crabapple jelly to apple peel jelly, but with a more potent flavor.
This recipe for homemade crabapple jelly from Grow a Good Life is a great one to follow. They suggest using 25% underripe crabapples and 75% ripe crabapples to ensure there is enough natural pectin for the jelly to set.
Not a fan of jelly? Try making jam instead! This delicious sounding recipe for crabapple jam adds fresh mint leaves and vanilla, with a consistency similar to apple butter.
Skip the applesauce and make crabapple sauce instead. All you need is two ingredients: crabapples and your favorite sweetener.
If you don’t want to peel the apples, I like to use a food mill to make applesauce. Just cut out any bad spots and put the crabapples in a slow cooker. You can also cook them on the stove or wood stove in a pot with a little water added to keep them from burning.
In a food mill, grind the crabapples until they are soft. This will get rid of the skins and seeds. After that, add sugar, honey, or another sweetener to taste to the sauce and put it back in the slow cooker. Simmer the mixture for a few hours, or until it reaches the consistency you want.
After you make crabapple sauce, try thickening it down into crabapple butter! Add some cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves for a true taste of Autumn, and enjoy on a thick slice of homemade bread. Crabapple butter can also be canned to enjoy later.
Here are some simple instructions to follow if you want to use a slow cooker for crabapple butter.
Do your kids love fruit leather? It makes a quick, healthy, on-the go snack that you can easily make at home with a food dehydrator. If you have an abundance of crabapples, try making fruit leather.
The process of making crabapple fruit leather is quite simple once you’ve mastered crabapple sauce. Chris at Joybilee farm has a great recipe for crabapple fruit leather.
The basic process is to start with crabapple sauce that has been sweetened to taste. You simply spread the sauce on trays and put them into your dehydrator. You can make fruit leather in the oven if you don’t have a dehydrator. Just set the oven to the lowest setting and leave it there for few hours.
- Caramel Crab Apples
In Central Vermont, an annual fall outing is to the Tunbridge Fair. This is a typical harvest fair, with animal shows, carnival rides, and all the usual fair food, like caramel apples.
Caramel apples are tasty, especially when covered in nuts or other treats. Making them at home makes them extra special. A sweet type of crab apple can be used to make a smaller caramel apple that kids will love. It’s great for a fall get-together or Halloween party.
This incredible homemade caramel crab apple recipe uses maple syrup and maple sugar to sweeten!
Most people know how to pickle vegetables like cucumbers and beans, but you can also pickle fruit! A spicy pickled crabapple would be great with roasted chicken or on an appetizer tray.
When pickling anything, you want to pick the best quality fruit possible. Your pickled dish will only taste as good as the crabapples you use, so stay away from ones that have a lot of damage or blemishes.
The recipe for spicy pickled crabapples starts by making a brine with apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, and spices. This is a canning-safe recipe that needs to be processed in a boiling water canner.
Chutney complements different dishes, especially poultry or pork dishes. You may change the spices in the recipe, or you might add other herbs like oregano or rosemary.
The best way to describe crabapple chutney is a chunky, savory, spiced version of applesauce. You add onions, garlic, cranberries, and so many other yummy ingredients. Everything is placed into a slow cooker and cooked on low for six hours, then mashed.
This crabapple syrup elevates a simple fruit into a gourmet topping for breakfast foods, or a mix-in for winter cocktails. It only requires crabapples, sugar, and water.
Fall is not fall without homemade apple cider. You can use sweet crabapples instead of regular apples, or you can mix regular apples and crabapples for a balanced taste.
This recipe for crabapple cider uses only five ingredients and is a great use for a prolific crabapple tree!
If you don’t have a juicer or a cider press, this overnight crabapple juice recipe could be a fun way to make delicious juice. Remember that crabapples have varying levels of sweet/tart, so adjust the recipe as needed.
Liqueurs are great ways to preserve and enjoy seasonal harvests. One of my favorite homemade liqueurs, nocino, is made from black walnuts.
Crabapple liqueur is an easy recipe for beginners, and unlike making wine or hard cider, requires little equipment. However, you will want to plan ahead. Take a peek at this homemade crabapple liqueur recipe and double the batch for holiday gifts!
- Crabapple Hard Cider
We use apple drops from our neighborhood and a nearby orchard to make a lot of hard apple cider every year.
For fermentation to happen, your cider needs to be sweet enough, but adding crababbles to your apple blend will make it taste more complex. Some cider aficionados recommend 10-20% crabapples.
Follow my simple hard apple cider recipe to make crabapple hard cider. For more information on the best apples for hard cider, click here.
Apple crisp is one of my favorite fall desserts, and it’s so quick and easy to make when you have extra apples. Crabapples work well too, either on their own, or blended with standard apples.
If you’re looking for an easy dessert on a cold evening, try this crabapple crisp recipe. If you’re using a mix of apples, taste to sweeten.
- Crabapple Strawberry Tart
Here’s another dessert idea using crabapples: Crabapple strawberry tart.
When the crabapples are ready, take some strawberries out of the freezer. The sweet strawberries will go well with the sour crabapples. Add in the flaky pastry crust, and you have the recipe for a divine dessert.
Apple pie is one of the best ways to use crabapples! Fun fact: some species of crabapples are native to North America, which makes crabapple pie a truly American dessert!
Use your favorite pie recipe and either use a different fruit (remember to check the sweetness) or add crabapples.
FORAGING CRAB APPLES + What To Do With Them | Vegan Cooking | Plant Based Jam | HCLF
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