This is a lovely, simple hawthorn jelly recipe that you can have with cheese or meats. Make it now and you’ll be in time for giving it away as Christmas presents.
If your celebrating is more earth-centric, then you’ll be in time for the return of the sun on December 21st.
Enjoy this autumnal hawthorn jelly recipe.
Step 1
Find a nice Hawthorn bush (Crataegus monogyna) laden with lovely red haws.
Step 2
Pick 1.5lbs of hawthorn berries (haws). This will make 1 jar of hawthorn jelly, so obviously if you need more jars, pick more fruit.
Make sure that you remove the stalks. A good way is to simply roll a clump of berries (stalks and all) in between your hands, and you’ll find the haws just roll off. It’s certainly easier than individually pulling off each stalk.
Step 3
Now wash your haws and then drain.
Step 4
Put the haws into a heavy saucepan, and cover with 1.5 cups of water.
Step 5
Bring to the boil and simmer for 1 hour. Mash the berries with a potato masher every 20 minutes.
Step 6
Now strain the mixture over night using some muslin, or as I did, a jelly bag.
To keep the jelly clear do not squeeze the jelly bag, just let the juice drip. If you’re not bothered whether your hawthorn jelly is clear or not then squeeze away.
Step 7
For every 1 pint of juice measure out 1lb of sugar.
Step 8
Now squeeze the juice of 1 lemon.
Step 9
Mix the sugar and lemon juice into a heavy saucepan along with the hawthorn juice. Bring the mixture to the boil, stirring continuously until the sugar has dissolved.
Now rapid boil for 10 minutes until …
Step 10
… the jelly has reached setting point.
Step 11
Now skim off any foam from the top of the jelly liquid, and pour into sterilised, warm jars and screw on the lids.
Eat at will. There is no need to leave the hawthorn jelly for a month or so.
Share & Bookmark This Story!
{ 6 trackbacks }
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
i was searching for hawthorn jelly recipes as i picked lots today, and stumbled upon your site, looks most interesting and i will definitely be back to read more when i’ve finished playing with my hawthorn berries and sloes! thanks lots for the recipe!
Are the volumes correct?
I had to use double the amount of water just to stop the mush from drying to a biscuit while simmering and I certainly didn’t get the stream of liquid coming out of the jelly bag as shown in the photo – only one or two drips a minute.
How much liquid (prior to adding the sugar) should I expect to get? 1.5 cups = 5/8 pint (358ml) and most of that evaporates off (the haws adding nothing to the final liquid volume).
I made this last night exactly as the recipe says but double the amounts.
I kept the lid on whilst it simmered to keep the water in and left it overnight to strain through a jelly bag.
All I got was a quarter of a pint of juice draining off.
Could anyone provide the proper amount of liquid to add please?
Tony & David: Yes the measurements are correct. I made this Hawthorn Jelly recipe on 17th October 2008. Maybe you’ve just picked the haws too early, and they haven’t developed enough in size or moisture content.
Could you please tell me where in the US can I purchase some fresh hawthornes.
Michael: Sorry I can’t help you with suppliers in the US and I am in the UK. One thing to bare in mind is that I would encourage you to go out onto the land and learn to identify and harvest rosehips yourself, rather than buying them. Foraging is a very relaxing and pleasurable activity for all the family.
As others have experienced my haw berries didn’t produce very much liquid at all, despite adding about three times the suggested quantity of water at the boiling stage. The jelly however did set very very solid, so must have contained a lot of pectin. This suggests that the haws weren’t very ripe – but I picked them in November 5th in North England. Is it better to pick even later? Although the jelly is a nice colour, the haws don’t seem to have much flavour, I can mainly taste sugar and lemon.
Ruth: Not all plants taste the same. Even within as little as five feet there can be a huge difference in taste. With Hawthorn I have found that many are quite bland, so what I do is nibble a raw haw to determine its flavour. If it is bland I will leave the tree alone, if it tastes sweet and nourishing then I will harvest.
Try and get out of thinking that a wild edible plant species will have a consistent taste, because they vary so much depending on habitat, environment and time of year etc. These are wild, feral, undomesticated plants, so taste is going to vary and that is one of the joys I love about foraging. It’s not like going to a grocers and buying a pound of carrots
Hello, I just moved to Tasmania (Australia),
There are billions of blackberries and hawthorne berries growing everywhere.
I made some beautiful blackberry jam yesterday and I will start experimenting with adding hawberrie jelly after I found more jars.
Can’t wait!
Eveline
Thanks for your recipe and the steps.
I made this overt the week-end and encountered two issues:
1) I did not have enough juice after letting it sit overnight, so I had to squeeze the jelly bag a bit. I ended up with one small pot from 3,5lbs of berries. I may add more water next time as well as keep the lid on to prevent all the water from evaporating.
2) While the taste is amazing, the jelly also set very solid and I can’t really spread it. I think (I have no prior experience with jelly) that it boiled too long the second time? Or is it because of issue #1 and I didn’t have enough water?
In any case, I love the taste!
thanks for the recipe, I had to use two pint of water on mine after an unsuccessful first attempt but really beautiful when I got it right. Will this recipe work for rowan and elderberries?
With a bit more water, a bit less sugar, and a bit less careful about “squeezing the pulp”, this recipe also makes a fine substitute for cranberry sauce. I couldn’t find the “jellied” style cranberry sauce where I live, but hawthorn in abundance. This Thanksgiving day, we’re going to have whole-berry cranberry sauce, and jellied hawthorn sauce. Works great with a touch of cinnamon, too!
I haven’t tried this recipe but I usually make what I call Hedgerow Jelly which is a mix of haw, blackberries, elderberries and rosehips in whatever quantities I happen to fall upon. It tastes great, has a good colour and with all those nutrients can only help to keep the winter bugs at bay!
I was very intrigued and made hawthorn berry jam – and to be honest it tasted absolutely awful – had an unusual flavour which didnt alter however much sugar and lemon I added. May well be a good addition to other berries but terrible alone in my opinion – and i make a great variety of jams (not just your common or garden stuff).
I think the best way to make this jelly is to set it in ice-cube trays instead of jars. It does tend to set very firm – I think haws (especially early in the season) have lots of pectin. When the jelly is set, turn out the ice-cube trays, toss the jellies in icing sugar or ordinary sugar – you get amazing sweets, with the texture of turkish delight but the amazing aromatic haw flavour.
but what does it actually taste like?!
I threw all the berries I could get hold of together hawthorn, sloe, blackberries, crab apples and some plum juice left over from a crumble that I had frozen. This ensured it wasn’t too ‘stiff’ and tasted richer and also gave me a far greater quality..(someone did suggest I threw in a tin of Pilchards for good measure )…but it tastes fabulous and looks great..
Hi Robin,
Thanks for the recipe and inspiration. I added 500g of elderberries and a 1 kg of cooking apples off of a tree in the village to 2kg of haws. Made about 8 jars and am looking forward to trying it =]
@Emma – it’s hard to describe the flavour – it doesn’t really taste like anything else! It’s delicate and aromatic though. Strange as I find the raw berries are so bland and floury – they don’t seem to taste of anything. I made some haw jelly sweets earlier in the season, and I’m going to make what is left of my sweets into a Fry’s Turkish Delight style chocolate bar. Yum!
made this jelly it is delicious I added about 4 times the amount of water adding the water as the berries dried up I only got a half pound of jelly but i am going to gather more berries and make more it set perfect not solid thank you
I made this jelly today, adding 1 cooking apple, some fresh ginger and a teabag sized aspen wine flavour herbs, it is still very runny, but I had 4 0.4 ltr jars out of double your measurements, but it was too sweet. I forgot doubling the lemonjuice! There was enough liquid, but I used a special steam juice extracting unit. The colour though is a jewel, could mistake it for quince jelly, a bit more red and the taste: like smelling sweet roses.
I just made this with the 8.5 cups of berries my Washington Hawthorn (native here in NY) produced this year. Like the other posters, I had to keep adding more water to keep the berries from drying out; also, I only had 4 hours to strain it. It turned out delicious anyway: sort of like honey with a hint of cranberry, a rich shade of cherry red and just the right consistency. I ended up with 2 cups of jelly.
Picked the Haws on a Saturday, cleaned and juiced on Sunday, left in jelly bag overnight to drip. Cooked and canned on a Tuesday. I opted to add 6 T. of pectin to the juice and the jelly set up beautifully. It is delicious! nothing like I had expected. I will definitely put this up again!
I started with 750g of berries and I more than covered them with water. After cooking them and leaving them overnight dripping through muslin, I boiled the liquid with 1kg of jam sugar. I used jam sugar because that is recommended for high pectin fruits, preserving sugar would be used for low pectin fruit. I added 500ml of water to the mixture, mainly because I had wanted to use the bag of sugar up (hence the 1kg), but also because of the comments above about the jelly being too set. The resulting jam is wonderful, it has set perfectly, and we have finished the jar we kept for us, the kids loved it, and I am wondering if the jars I have made for friends’ Christmas will ever make it to them! I got 6 small jars and one big jar of jelly. Thanks for the other posts, they gave me great tips. I didn’t use the lemon.
Made a couple of jars recently and added double the amount of water, opened a jar today and it had set perfectly and was delicious with our roast chicken. Will certainly be making again next year.