Homemade Apple Jelly Recipe: Canning for Beginners

Take a look at our guide to canning food, and preserve your summer bounty to enjoy in the months to come.

By Kristina Estis
Updated on June 3, 2023
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by iStockphoto.com/Dave Herriman
Pickled beets, asparagus and beans can add a unique flavor to salads and relish plates.

Can your harvest safely with this primer on water bath canning vs pressure canning for beginners. Includes a homemade apple jelly recipe to get you started!

Cooking with vegetables fresh from my little garden brought me so much joy. Summer’s end was fast approaching, however, and the rewards of the summer’s hard work would end with the first cold snap. But did it have to? Why should I spend the winter using inferior canned tomatoes when I could enjoy my own heirlooms? Canning was the answer, and a guide to canning food would be very helpful for all undertaking this pursuit.

The prospect of home canning can be intimidating. I wish I could say I learned as a child at my grandmother’s side. The real story is that I learned alone with a shiny new boiling water canner, a “Ball Blue Book,” and the Internet. I was shocked at my success, but the fact is so many resources are out there for the uninitiated that anyone can tread fearlessly into home canning.

Once you know the basics of water bath canning vs pressure canning, you can start your home canning journey with the simple Homemade Apple Jelly recipe below!

Worth the bother

People choose home canning for many reasons. Memories of families getting together when their favorite fruit ripened and working in a steamy kitchen are enough to bring some folks back year after year. Others seek to reap the fruit of their labors long out of season, every jar of pickles stretching summer’s bounty a little further. Many appreciate that home canning is environmentally friendly in a tangible way: glass jars can be reused for years (or in my home, repurposed as drinking glasses), a bumper crop that would spoil before it can be consumed doesn’t go to waste, peels become compost, and fuel is not used to transport goods from farm to factory to table.

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