Crab Apple Crazy - A Collection of Recipes | PreparednessMama (2024)

FAQs

What can you do with crab apples? ›

They're excellent in desserts such as pies, chips, and tarts. Crab apple enthusiasts also love making them into jelly or jam. The high levels of pectin in these fruits help to give jelly or jam its jiggly texture. It's up to you how you use these little apples.

Yes, you can eat crab apples. Generally, they're too tart to eat raw, but their appliness is intense when cooked. Crab apples have a really high pectin content, great for jams and jellies.

Use crabapple jelly as you would any other jelly — spread on toast, scones, or biscuits. Warm slightly and brush onto grilled pork chops or a pork roast. Melt the jelly and use it as a glaze for apple or pear tart or a bread pudding. Serve as a condiment with pâté or a cheese platter.

Freezing temperatures make the crab apples soft and sweet, so they taste better when it's cold outside. Alternately, you could pick them when ripe in fall and stick them in your freezer for a couple days. Regardless, make sure to taste test along the way!

Is It Safe To Eat Crab Apples? Yes, crab apples can safely be eaten cooked or raw. “They're most commonly used in baked goods or jellies and jams due to their high level of pectin,” explains Edwards. “Most people do not eat them raw because they are so tart, though some varieties are sweeter than others when raw.”

However, as long as you do not eat the core or seeds, crab apples are not toxic. Even if you consume a few seeds by accident, they will most likely pass through your system unnoticed. Cyanide toxicity is a possibility only if you eat more than 100 seeds in one sitting.

Deer congregate around fruit- and nut-bearing trees. In fact, white oak and sawtooth acorns, persimmons, and crabapples are what deer will eat first, even before a lush food plot.

American Crabapples have a number of uses. Both the Native Americans and the early European settlers used them. American Crabapple fruit can be made into jellies, preserves, pies, cider, or vinegar. Because the fruits contain a large amount of malic acid, they are sour or tart and require sweetening.

Freezing temperatures make the crab apples soft and sweet, so they taste better when it's cold outside. Or, you could pick them when ripe in the fall and freeze them for a couple of days.

When should you pick crab apples? ›

A dry season results in dry, mealy fruit, A wet season produces more juicy, succulent fruit. As crabapples ripen they become sweeter. Foragers should wait for crabapples to ripen completely and become soft before harvesting. Some sources suggest waiting to harvest them until after the first frost in the fall.

Crab apples have been used in Ayurvedic medicine to cure a wide range of conditions, including gout, indigestion, inflammation, constipation, fever, and even cancer. Most crab apple trees blossom in shades of pink or white during the summer.

You would have to eat a lot of these seeds to see any ill effects, so swallowing one or a couple on accident won't be cause for concern ( 2 ). Crab apples are essentially little apples and safe to eat. Be sure to avoid the seeds and core, just as you would if you were eating a regular apple.

Crab Apples are generally very tart when eaten raw, with a blend of slightly sweet and ever so sour. The fruit tends to be processed/cooked to make it into something rather delicious. If you slice open the fruit and the seeds are brown, it is ripe and ready for your recipes. There's no need to peel them before using.

Most crab apples are actually quite sweet when they are ripe. Small in size, they pack a ton of flavor that's perfect for fresh eating! Most crab apples will keep in cold storage for at least a month (or more), so be sure to save some of your harvest for fresh eating.

"Wildings", as they are called, are unpredictably variable, so you will need to pick carefully from several trees for a balance of sweetness, acidity and tannin level. Crab apples, the original wild form of the tree, do not make good cider on their own, but can be added to other apples if you need extra tannin.