Fruit steamer - found it!
Hello everyone, Please use this new category that Danny has very kiindy set up for us 'Steamers' to use.
I've had mine for a little while now and use it regularly so if anyone wants a chat I'll try to help best I can.
I'll post up a photo of my steamer and some links - bare with me on this as have the dreaded builders in the house at the moment and it's chaos.
Mental picture not so good!!
Please bear with me (to be patient) NOT bare with me oh my gosh....in this weather, no way.
Here is the link to the one I purchased although you can get similar steamers from other suppliers.
It was £54.99 when I bought it in 2011 so a little bit cheaper now at £49.99.
If you phone them for info I found them really helpful. They also keep a good stock of spares etc for anything you buy. I have to stop myself from browsing the website - too tempting.
won't be shopping on there for a while, I have my eye on an electronic pressure cooker I want first.
Hi, I bought a steam juicer from Westfalia in August and am having a go. Today I made a chilli jelly with juice from steamed apples and unripe grapes - it's a lovely red colour.
put them in, should I have cooked them longer and/or left them in till they shrivelled or burst?
I had same problem with Rosehips and I make a lot of Rosehip Jelly so this is what I do now.
I boil up the hips and apples first for about an hour with just enough water to cover the fruit.
Then transfer everything from the pan into the steamer and steam for another hour or longer.
This produces a really nice amount of juice. You can do the hips on their own if you like - I do sometimes depending on what apples I have available as certain varieties just go to mush and boiling and steaming is too much for them.
In the past I have experimented with all sorts of combinations - you can put a square of muslin in the pan before you add the fruit and this will strain out a lot of the bits for you as they steam - or when you are syphoning the juice off use a jug with a large strainer in it and lay the muslin in that.
The juice is lovely and very concentrated so a bit of water from the boiling wont hurt the flavour at all. I know some people who boil the hips twice to extract as much as possible from them.
Also there are recipes where they tell you to chop up the hips but I don't do that as they have lots of hairs inside which are an irritant (used to make itching powder!) and I really don't fancy getting any stray hairs in the juice.
Let me know how you get on and best of luck. Would be great to know what quantity of juice you get.
Thanks - loads of great ideas. Now I have to go out and pick some more rosehips! I plan to try boiling the rosehips on their own before steaming. And the muslin to line the base of the pan seems a very good idea.
I used about 2kgs of apples and 900g of rosehips and got 1.6L of juice. I did strain it again and used your suggested flavourings of orange and ginger but added the peel of half an orange that had been steeping in vodka (to make orange essence) and a large piece of fresh ginger finely grated. That made 6 small jars. I did need to boil the juice and sugar for over 25 mins to get a set. I think the jars would be more attractive if the ginger was in fine matchsticks. You can hardly see the ginger in mine but it does taste nice!
Tomorrow I hope to finish turning some apple and hawthorn berry juice into jelly. This is the first time I have picked and cooked with haws!
Sounds wonderful Erna and I think that is a good amount of juice to produce. Love the orange peel in vodka idea as well - must try that.
I buy a huge bag of fresh ginger from our local market and cut it up into usable size chunks, peel it with the head of a teaspoon and wrap it up in cling film to freeze it. That way you can just take a chunk out of the freezer as and when you need it and grate it into the jelly. The little shreds do look nice. I have used stem ginger as well and that works fine.
Would love to know how the hawthorn jelly turns out as I have some in the freezer.
Today I made 3 jars of apple and hawthorn jelly and bottle (750 mls) of juice. And I sieved some of the pulp - too much effort to do it all - flavoured it with orange juice and sugar, to use as a dessert.
The jelly is a pretty red/orange colour and tastes good.
I have bookmarked the hawthorn ketchup and hawthorn brandy, both from comments on forum posts - although neither of these use the steam juicer!
Yesterday while taking the neighbour's dog out, I found some rosehips and picked about 800 gms. I'm going to have a go at syrup so have started boiling the hips before steaming. Then I'm thinking of adding the steamed rosehips to apples for a hot chilli jelly as a another use of the hips. I haven't made a hot jelly yet.
Thanks for the tip about ginger - sounds very useful to have fresh ginger available without it shrivelling in the fridge.
That really is a good tip with the Ginger, Maura, never thought of Freezing it.