One of the first things I realised when cooking and baking gluten free all those years ago, was that the textures of foods and the way that the finished product 'behaves' suffers quite badly -unless the gluten is replaced with a viable alternative. Without a replacement, your finished products tend to crumble into a pitiful pile. These days I use xanthan gum in powder form. At one time it was like looking for gold dust - health food shops didn't stock it and buying over the internet was expensive. Thankfully, these days xanthan gum is readily available (Asda/Walmart stock it in their Gluten Free range) but even better, it is on the list of prescribable essentials - so depending on your circumstances and age, it can be absolutely free!
If you can't get your hands on this, or would like to try something a little different, try pectin. It is a little difficult to get your hands on the dried variety, and expensive. The liquid that you can buy is often not really suitable for some cooking purposes in the gluten free kitchen. The great news is, pectin is something that is really easy to make at home and is a by-product of something that you would normally throw in the bin.
When you are using cooking apples (for pies and crumbles) save the peelings. This is easily stored in the freezer for when you need to make your next batch of pectin. And here it is, who would have thought it would ever be so cheap and easy!
Pectin
Take the peel from one medium cooking apple into a small pan. Cover the peelings with a teacup of water and bring to the boil. Cook, uncovered for around 15 minutes, or, until the liquid has reduced to about 6 tablespoons. Strain this all through a wire mesh seive, pressing the peelings into it with the back of a wooden spoon and catching the juice strainings into the bowl that you have placed underneath.
Discard the apple peelings that are left in the seive and place the juices to one side to cool. When the liquid is cold it will be like a pale green, thin jelly.
Use this jelly as directed in recipes, but put 2 tbs of the pectin in to start with. After msixing it into a batter, for example, if it feels too thin, add the remaining tbs of pectin and it will thicken as you stir.
Obviously, the strength of your pectin depends soley on the apple chosen and how much you manage to extract from the whole cooking process.
2 comments:
Do they have to be cooking apples? I had read that green apples are the best for making pectin. I actually tried it last summer but failed... Thinking of trying it again after reading your post. My toddler is going through a phase where he wants all his apples peeled, maybe I could use any apple peels for the pectin?
The best apples to use for making pectin are cooking apples, crab apples or underipe apples - all of these have higher pectin levels than your usual eating apples. I would stick with these types to be honest with you, otherwise you will produce a less effective pectin that just won't do the job.
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