I love making dandelion jelly. Besides the fact that it tastes great, people just look at you funny when you tell them you got some dandelion jelly made this weekend.
It makes a bright yellow jelly that’s almost as bright and yellow as the actual flower and has a slight honey taste.
It’s really good and really easy to make. Here’s how.
Ingredients
- About 3 cups of dandelion flowers
- 6 Tablespoons of pectin
- 6 Cups of sugar
- 3 Tablespoons of lemon juice
Instructions
You’ll want to pick flowers that are fully open, at least I did. I picked about 3 cups or so.
I didn’t really measure, I just filled the bowl I had.
I’ve seen recipes that say you need to pull the petals out of the green bottoms and only use the petals because the green parts can taste bitter.
I’ve never separated the flowers when I made it and I’ve never had an issue with bitter. But to each his own, I suppose. So you can do try which ever way you want. I would guess you would need more flowers if you’re going to pull the petals.
Side note: Did you know each “petal” is actually it’s own flower? Cool hu?
Once you’ve picked the flowers, you’ll want to wash them well, of course. Tiny little bugs get down into those petals and sometimes, they don’t come out easily. I use the sprayer on my faucet and it usually works pretty well.
After thoroughly washing your flowers, put them in a sauce pan and cover with about 3-4 cups of water. Bring your water to a rolling boil and let it boil well for about 10-15 min.
Then strain your flowers from the water. Make sure to squish all that liquid out of the flowers. Then you can compost the flowers. You’ll notice the water that’s left isn’t that pretty yellow color. That worried me the first time I made this recipe. Don’t worry, it’ll look better later.
Let the water cool back to room temperature. I’m not real sure why this is, but I’ve seen it in more than one recipe and I just haven’t tried it another way yet. It’s always been convenient to let it sit while I got something else done so it’s not been an issue.
In the end you’ll want 4 cups of liquid. If you didn’t get 4 cups from the boil, you can add some kind of apple juice or just add more water to make 4 cups.
Add your liquid back into a sauce pan or a stock pot and add your sugar, pectin and lemon juice.
Heat this up slowly to melt the sugar and once you get to a boil, boil for 2 minutes while stirring constantly so it doesn’t scorch or burn.
After this boil, there may be some foam that forms on the jelly. If so, just spoon it off into a bowl. You don’t want that in your jelly jars.
Now it’s done. Pour it into your jelly jars.
And now you’ll notice the pretty yellow color. I told you it would look pretty later.
At this point you can add it to the fridge, give it away or can it. If you don’t can it, you’ll want to refrigerate it and share with others, cause this recipe makes about 4 pints. That’s a pretty big batch of jelly for me anyway. I’m the only one in the house that eats jelly.
I water bath canned most of this jelly, and put the rest in the fridge to use. I’ll give some away and have some sweet golden goodness for later too.
For canning I water bathed them for 15 minutes.
I’ve talked before about how great dandelions are here. I hope you’ll learn to love them as much as I do.
Let me know if you’ve ever made dandelion jelly, and if so, how it turned out. Did you like it? Did you separate the petals or did you just use the whole flower? I’d love to hear.
Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey
