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

FAQs

Can you freeze crabapples for later? ›

Fruit may be frozen in a flattened shape to fit into an unbaked pie shell or cobbler dish. Before freezing, fit the plastic bag of prepared crabapples into the pie plate or dish, freeze, then remove plate or dish and store crabapples in freezer.

Storage tips: Some varieties last a few days, while others will last for a few months. For best results, store them in a sealed container in the fridge as crabapples can pick up flavours from other foods like apples do. Crabapples also freeze well.

Even desirable crab apples are sour. This sourness is presumably the root of their name, given that crabby connotes a difficult or grouchy person, though another theory is that it's an alteration of Scots and northern English scrab. The term crab apple dates from the early fifteenth century.

Food Uses of Crab Apple

They also make pleasant fruit cheeses mixed with blackberries or other fruits. Verjuice, made from crushed Crab Apple, is sometimes described as a 'cider' or 'vinegar', which can be used as a substitute for lemon juice when strained and left for a month.

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.

Peel and core the apples then cut into slices, around half a centimetre thick. Put the slices in a large bowl and spritz over the lemon juice. Toss the slices together to make sure they're all lightly coated in lemon juice. Open freeze the slices until solid, then transfer to a food bag.

As noted above, crab apples are perfectly safe to eat, even off the branch. As with all varieties of apples, however, you should avoid eating or chewing crab apple seeds. The seeds from apples and crab apples are toxic and if consumed, can metabolize into a poisonous cyanide compound, notes Brown.

Crab apples usually ripen in the fall, but foragers can begin looking for consumable fruit as early as August. Over 1,000 species of crab apple tree are extant in the United States, and each of these species reaches peak ripeness at a different time between the months of August and October.

Crabapples ripen in late summer through fall. The amount of rainfall during the growing season will determine the taste and quality of the crabapples. A dry season results in dry, mealy fruit, A wet season produces more juicy, succulent fruit. As crabapples ripen they become sweeter.

Drawbacks to crabapples include root suckering and messy fruit in the early spring. There are many factors to consider when selecting a crabapple for your garden, including bloom color, fall foliage color, fruit size, tree size, and disease resistance.

Why can't i eat crab apples? ›

A crab apple's flesh is perfectly safe for people to eat. But like other apples, the seeds contain a toxic compound that can turn into cyanide when eaten. But don't worry — these apples are safe as long as you avoid the seeds and core.

Here's the deal: crab apples contain cyanogenic glycosides, particularly in the seeds and core. While a human might spit out a seed or two, dogs aren't quite as discerning. Ingesting these compounds can lead to cyanide poisoning, which means trouble for your pup's oxygen delivery system.

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.

Rich in Meaning

Crab apples have a longstanding association with love and marriage, and the trees themselves symbolic of youth, joy, magic, and surprise… the embodiment of endless possibilities.

Be sure to use fully ripe apples when making raw apple cider vinegar. Some crab apple varieties fall when they're ready, so you may want to pick slightly green fruit from the tree and let it sit out at room temperature until fully ripened.

“It's best to freeze crab in the shell, or in preparations such as crab cakes or casseroles for up to three months. Without the protection of the shell or other ingredients, frozen crab meat loses its tender texture and becomes stringy. Cook the whole crab before freezing, and never thaw and then refreeze.”

The best way to freeze crab that has already been opened, is to place the cooked crab in a heavy-duty freezer bag or airtight plastic container to maintain freshness.