How to make Sloe Jelly (not Sloe Gin!)

[@the.annamoon]

Yes! I love your recipes and preservation videos!! You guys are my favorite channel.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

That's so lovely - thank you!

[@TheOldSwedesFarm]

It just isn't fair watching your channel. You make us hungry (or thirsty with the wine) every time we watch. Fiona makes us want to eat eggs! Another great video! Cheers!

[@EnglishCountryLife]

They don't call it "The Good Life" for nothing. 😁

[@carolbabilon1147]

I wiuld love to see more!!

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Then I'll make more Carol - thank you!

[@harrym2523]

100% yes for the wild tour and horseradish harvest! Cheers mate

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Righto Harry - will be done!

[@mohdmansoor1455]

i love the end

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Thanks very much 🙂

[@eisforelbowsmash]

Yes we would like to see more. Homemade horseradish sauce sounds awesome.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

I'll definitely film that - love horse radish!

[@CupkakeKaz1]

Many thanks for this , am going to have a go with our Sloe harvest, never thought about using them in a preserve this way, great vid .

[@EnglishCountryLife]

So glad you liked it, do let me know what you think when you try it?

[@petervincent4461]

Along with my usual Redcurrant Jelly, Gooseberry Jam and Sloe Gin, I gave this a whirl yesterday. It is lovely, real depth of flavour and tart after note. Brill

[@EnglishCountryLife]

So glad you liked it. I'm amazed it's not more common 🙂

[@marktownley3587]

I’ve just come across your you tube channel, and find it inspirational. We are so looking forward to planning our smallholding in Devon in the next few years. As I get older I realise that the love of growing veg and fruit, rearing our own meat is more important to us and your videos give us great advise and ideas for the future. Keep the videos coming. Thank you.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

That's really kind of you Mark, thank you! If you ever have any questions or want to chat about Smallholding, just say. We Devon boys have to stick together 😉

[@SpinsterSister]

That jelly is simply beautiful! Thorny hedges serving two purposes - would love to watch your field trips out in the area and teaching us more!

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Then more will be made 🙂

[@Fudge2015]

Made this today!!! Love the channel. Thank you 🙏

[@EnglishCountryLife]

@@Fudge2015 So glad - have you tried it yet?

[@sallypuddick7406]

Yes would love to see you harvesting horseradish, and making the sauce 😊

[@EnglishCountryLife]

I'll be sure and put it into n the list!

[@petervincent4461]

Had the Sloe jelly from your recipe with our venison on Christmas day - wonderful - thanks

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Excellent- Merry Christmas Peter 🎅🦌

[@marlysjcollins8775]

Thank thank you for this great recipe! I can’t wait to try it.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

It really is nice - both sweet and sharp 🙂

[@egan1egan192]

yes. I have just made some sloe jam an now in the process of making the jelly Mary .

[@EnglishCountryLife]

@@egan1egan192 Good call!

[@luckydesilva6733]

Thank you so much . I will go hunting for some Sloe in Wordsley/Stourbridge.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

It's the perfect time of year - good luck!

[@dorjon6121]

Very good presentation, thank you👏👏👍 So clear in dealing with the ‘difficult’ points so often left unclear in ‘other’ posts. I have one question. You advise ‘giving the bag a good squeeze’. I have made crab apple jelly for years. Very specifically, others advise (and it has also been my experience!) that you do NOT squeeze the beg as it makes the jelly cloudy. Is it just different for sloe jelly?

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Just the way I've always done it with sloes - my jelly seems clear enough, but certainly just allow to drip if you prefer

[@emporium8350]

Thank you so much for your EXCELLENT presentation a really professional approach, so very well done. I am going to try making this with some left over sloes from making sloe gin

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Do let us know how that works - its an interesting idea. Merry Christmas!

[@sammahoney904]

Great video , thank you.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Really glad you enjoyed it Sam - just in time for sloe season!

[@asimpleextraordinarylife8195]

That looks delicious

[@EnglishCountryLife]

It's a lovely seasonal treat 🙂

[@randallmitchell6164]

Great video, thanks

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Thanks Randall!

[@charlotten5626]

Brilliant video, thank you so much, I will be picking sloes tomorrow to make jelly. I'll be looking for your pectin video and see what you have too 😊

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Thanks Charlotte - it's a firm favourite here (and a money saver too)

[@geoffanddebshipton6797]

Yes please to any preservation techniques you can share. Very interested in horseradish. Another great video Hugh. We are in the midst of marmalade making for the first time in a few years.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Oh fantastic, I bet you have all sorts of interesting stuff there!

[@geoffanddebshipton6797]

@@EnglishCountryLife Seville oranges last week (not ours but bought locally) and lemon marmalade this week from our tree. We really are lucky with all sorts of citrus over the next few months.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

@@geoffanddebshipton6797 I have lemon tree envy!

[@geoffanddebshipton6797]

@@EnglishCountryLife I can imagine. I’d be lost without our lemon tree!

[@Andrew.Croft.]

Great recipe will be going to get some sloes tomorrow, thanks for the video.... as well as some for gin of course.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

It would be rude not too 😉

[@Karen-eh5zg]

Wow i never knew this.. how interesting.. thank you Hugh 😊

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Glad you liked it - it's nice to do something different with sloes!

[@kufena]

Yes for the horseradish - interested to see what you do with it. Also, I’m going to make some elderberry jelly I think - similar to the sloe? Anyway, good channel.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Quite similar but the elderberry is not as sharp - better on toast 🙂

[@rubygray7749]

I made elderberry jelly one year which looked absolutely wonderful, but as time went on, it became more liquid and turned into syrup! Not sure why. But elderberry syrup is a recognised antiviral tonic. So that's not such a bad thing

[@EnglishCountryLife]

@@rubygray7749 Agreed. Elderberry tincture is great for colds!

[@mohdmansoor1455]

i like it

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Thanks!

[@JuneHowley]

Are you sure you can squeeze the jelly bag? Yours looks lovely but every one I've seen says never squeeze or it will go cloudy.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

@@JuneHowley If you don't want to, leave it drip for longer, but it's never hurt mine

[@benslidel2379]

I’m still picking blackberries for port. Would love to know about anything else like horseradish that I could spot on my travels

[@EnglishCountryLife]

I'll add horseradish to the list Ben!

[@grassrootsinternational]

Thanks, am wondering can I do something with the sloes and use honey instead of sugar or what you think?

[@EnglishCountryLife]

You could certainly try, but you may end up with more of a thick sauce then a jelly - well worth a try though!

[@paulkelly5974]

Can I use Jam Sugar to set this instead of pectin?

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Definitely!

[@annbaker5846]

Yes, would like to know how to make horseradish sauce

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Here you are Ann 🙂 kzbin.info/www/bejne/b4PVi6Gig6qcp7s

[@nickymercer4398]

Great video, could I use the sloes that have been fermenting in gin for the past year I wonder to make jelly? Or I might use them to add to melted chocolate 😋

[@EnglishCountryLife]

A lot of people use them in port for a second pass. For jelly I think use fresh 🙂

[@petervincent4461]

more of this - great, make redcurrant jelly and sloe gin, but will give this a go

[@EnglishCountryLife]

I don't think you will be disappointed, I'm amazed it's not more widely known!

[@micheleeastmond9552]

I have seen this fruit so many time on my walks amd always wondered what it was. Thanks for educating me😊. In addition to gin is it also traditionally used for winemking? Yes please for the horseradish adventure 👍🏾

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Hi Michele, it's a bit sour for winemaking but it has a cousin, the Bullace (a wild plum) that makes great wine!

[@rubygray7749]

@@EnglishCountryLife Yummo!! Anything with that deep dark colour is bound to be good for you. Here in Tasmania we have spme very English hawthorn hedges, but the sloes etc are more elusive. My grandmother had a large tree on her farm that produced huge amounts of small blue plums and she used to make me a case of bottles of blue plum sauce every year. I couldn't eat my dinner without plum sauce! I get a bit confused about the wild blue plum family. Is there a foolproof way to identify and distinguish between damsons, bullaces and sloes? I made some fabulous looking jam from buckets of little deep blue wild plums here one summer, but it turned out so astringent that it was inedible! Put a furry coating on my teeth. This year I picked some from a different wild tree which made lovely jam. But I still can't tell what fruit I had used!

[@EnglishCountryLife]

@@rubygray7749 Hi Ruby! All members of the prunus family cross pollinate like crazy so there are many hybrids. The very astringent ones sound just like sloes. Sloes are also smaller than Bullace (wild plum)

[@alexcrockett5665]

I tried making it but it didn't work like I didn't add any lemon or pectin but it still went really hard like toffee. I don't quite know what I did wrong but a guess is I boiled it too hard.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Sounds like it. Keep testing it on a cold plate and once it sets, take it off the heat

[@moniquem783]

Sloes aren’t readily available here in Australia, but a couple of online nurseries sell the trees, and a couple of places sell small amounts of dried sloes. Would the dried sloes work to make a very small bottle of sloe gin and to get a sense of the taste of the fruit? It’s a bit of a risk to buy a tree when you have no idea what it tastes like! Yes I’d love to see horseradish. I’m also intrigued by the whole hedgerow harvest thing as we don’t have that here, so anything you get from hedgerows and how you deal with them would be fascinating.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Hi Monique. Are damsons or plums available. Sloes are a sour / dry wild member of the plum family. I've made damson gin & it's delicious!

[@moniquem783]

@@EnglishCountryLife plums yes, damsons no. It looks like we can’t even get a damson tree. We have a few native plums, but you don’t find them in the supermarket to try fresh, only as superfood powders or very expensive jams. They’re on my list of trees to get as I want a lot of different bush tucker foods. I guess I can just make gin and jellies etc with them and assume that they taste about the same as sloes and damsons.

[@Coxeysbodgering]

Strange that I'm further south (Kent) and the damsons are just ripening and sloes nowhere near ready. Wood freezing them for a few hours help with the juice extraction, like in sole gin? I had a recipe for sloe wine, not got access to my books for time being but think doing the boil in water and strain, some pectic enzyme sugar and yeast should make a very pretty wine. Take care and stay safe, Mike

[@EnglishCountryLife]

I've never tried Sloe wine, didn't want to stone all the fruit, but boil & strain might be really interesting!

[@maxinedurling3425]

At long last something to do with sloes. I don't think I have ever seen wild horseradish so yes please

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Will do Maxine!

[@JosExotics]

Oh wow. Weirdly I just made a sloe, apple and gin jam. Never eaten a sloe before. I picked these last year and froze them.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

That sounds lovely, how was it?

[@JosExotics]

@@EnglishCountryLife It tastes lovely. But has a very slight unusual coating of the mouth, almost furry, but disappears quickly. I can only guess that's the sloes as I have used gin before when I made a pink Grapefruit and gin marmalade. That was lovely.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

@@JosExotics Interesting! No furry taste with this recipe but the gin may dissolve out other tastes?

[@JosExotics]

@@EnglishCountryLife also I pushed the pulp through a sieve to get rid of the stones, so the jelly as strained may well miss out this texture as its just the liquid. I will pick a load this year and try the jelly. I have made my jelly for this year. I do crabbe apple and chilli jelly which goes lovely with cheese. But definitely will be trying the sloes as a jelly. 👍

[@EnglishCountryLife]

@@JosExotics Oh I LOVE chilli jam 😋

[@davidfoster3337]

Great recipe but I make sloe gin first & then make the jelly. When you drain the gin from the sloes weigh them, add an equal weight of cooking apples, cover them with water & follow the rest of the recipe here. That way you get sloe gin & sloe jelly.

[@EnglishCountryLife]

That sounds great! I get impatient for the jelly and we have no shortage of sloes in the field 🙂

[@waveman69]

How about some wine with that sloe?

[@EnglishCountryLife]

I've never done it, but...why not?

[@anneniven6930]

Yes please horseradish

[@EnglishCountryLife]

Here you go Anne 🙂 kzbin.info/www/bejne/b4PVi6Gig6qcp7s

[@miazilla]

My mum always makes sloe cordial :) it's a very "grown-up" tasting cordial, not very sweet at all

[@EnglishCountryLife]

That sounds delicious!