We are just at the beginning of a brand new Abundance project in our village, and it is rapidly becoming clear to me that we are going to be inundated with fruit which needs dealing with quickly and efficiently! With this in mind, can anybody recommend anything which we might find really useful? (I'm thinking of things like apple corers, plum stoners, etc) Or are gadgets like that a total waste of time, money and resources? Also, is there anything we might not have thought of but will be essential? We've got preserving pans and we're collecting jam jars like crazy. This is a really exciting, but scary time as we have no idea just how much this is going to take off!

We are just at the beginning of a brand new Abundance project in our village, and it is rapidly becoming clear to me that we are going to be inundated with fruit which needs dealing with quickly and efficiently! With this in mind, can anybody recommend anything which we might find really useful? (I'm thinking of things like apple corers, plum stoners, etc) Or are gadgets like that a total waste of time, money and resources? Also, is there anything we might not have thought of but will be essential? We've got preserving pans and we're collecting jam jars like crazy. This is a really exciting, but scary time as we have no idea just how much this is going to take off!
(I've posted this here and in the cooking section as I wasn't entirely sure which was most appropriate!)

i would have though a decent set of knives would be better than the gadgets - but if you have children involved in the project the gadgets might be safer.sounds like a brilliant project though.

Are you preserving whole or making jams / chutneys?

If jams etc then a thermomater would be good and a few funnels for getting the stuff into the jars. Ive never really had loads of stuff to work with so not sure about things like apple corers etc.

Good luck though, sounds fantastic!

We will hopefully be making lots of jams and chutneys Mam. What has really got me thinking is that it took 2 of us about 4 hours to make 10 jars of cherry jam last week - largely because of trying to pick out the cherry stones!
I am hugely excited about the project, but we really are 'feeling our way' through it this first time!

Well then a thermometer (I cant spell LOL Magic!) will help a lot as it will let you know when its got to the right point for the jam. Lakeland have them, or the Jamshop (online) or the Range if you have one near you. Prep always takes ages, cherries, I cant see a way round making that faster. With jams it depends how fine a jam you want or if you are happy to have chunks of fruit in it. Im waiting on the Rowans to really ripen so I can make DH Rowan jelly, wont be a big batch though, its only for him, the rest of us have gone off it LOL

Probably the best thing I can suggest is more people to help with the prep.

I bought my sister a small cherry stoner after she told me how long she had spent stoning cherries last year. I haven't heard from her if she used it this year or how it was. They are supposed to be very useful though and for the price of a basic one (I paid about 8 euro) it's a gadget worth trying I'd say.

We got a cherry stoner a few weeks back and it did make the process a good deal faster.


A pressure canner would be an obvious purchase IMO - then you can bottle vegetables and non-acid produce - everything from runner beans to bunny rabbits.

Being faced with 10lbs of cherries last year, I invested in a cherry stoner before starting on them. I have to say it was worth every penny of the £10 (eeek!) it cost me and I have willed it to my eldest daughter . . .

How did the word Magic get in my post? LOL

LMHO ah thank you

Thanks, this is exactly what I needed. A cherry stoner seems like a very useful thing - in fact i'm sure i've seen a combined plum/cherry stoner somewhere on t'interweb.....

Had not even thought about a pressure canner Billy, so thanks for that too!

Anyone used an apple corer/peeler???

We have got a jam thermometer.

We just need lots and lots of volunteers now

A passata machine is a must if you are going to bottle any quantity of tomato sauce/puree/ketchup. The time it saves peeling and pipping tomatoes is incredible. Long laborious task otherwise if you have a large quantity to do. I think they are about £20 or so new.

I have two apple corers, actually. The first is the type that also splits the apples into eight. Only useful if you have very uniform apples smaller than the size of the whole thing. The other is the type that just cores. That is more useful but again doesn't always work as apples aren't always that uniform in shape and the cores don't always go exactly straight through. But it's a help to start with anyway.

For peeling I just use an ordinary veg peeler - if you're good with a knife that's just as quick, I'd say.

I've seen plum stoners which look like the cherry stoner but are a bit bigger.

We use an apple corer - it does help to remove most if not all the core
If I lived near enough to you I would have been happy to help too

I've got several maslin pans, a fermentation bin for doing large quantities of flower cordials (meadowsweet, elderflower etc) a steam juicer (great for speed as there's no need for putting things through jelly bags. Just be careful not to cook your fruit too long as after a while the "juice" that comes out is not very good.), a cherry stoner (got mine from westfalia and I LOVE it), an apple corer+peeler+slicer from Lakeland (also does pears), a mouli attachment for kenwood and a manual mouli (prefer the kenwood one but it can chuck stones at you), a canning set from Lakeland (currently on sale), a berry washer and berry picker (again from lakeland - no i'm not on comission!), a funnel for cordials and a jam funnel.

This year I have found a jam thermometer very useful for.....jams and jellies. (Far less hit and miss when looking for setting point.)

I wouldn't bother with gadgets, unless you're processing masses of apples. In that case it's possibly worth having one of those old fasioned things that clamp onto the table that peel and slice in one go - fruit on one side for cooking, skins on the other for chucking in with jellies to improve the set.
Otherwise, a couple of heat proof deep ladles, and a wide funnel, for filling the jars.
Soph

I thought I was going mad because I was sure I had replied to this question last night along with several other people. It's just posted in two different places though. Whew, insanity staved off for another day.

Could one of the mods perhaps merge the posts into one thread, please?

Sensible thought.

All I have to do now is work out how to do it.