Save your money, and invest your time in this beautiful slow cooked Quince Paste! After years of trying different methods, I settled on the slow cooker, I find it makes a beautifully consistent paste, without burning the bottom of the pot, burping out scalding bubbles and requiring round the clock stirring. And it pairs so well with cheese!
Ingredients
6 quince
1 cup water
Juice of 1 lemon
Sugar (see method for calculating sugar required)
Method
If your quince are furry, rub off fur, then peel and cut into chunks, keep about 1/4 of the core and pips. (see note below about insect damage)
Add the chunks of quince, core & pips, water and lemon juice to a large pot, and cook over a moderate heat until the fruit has fallen apart, about 20-25 minutes
Once the quince is a mash consistency, place a sieve over a clean bowl and place one scoop of mash in the sieve, then with a silicon spatular or metal spoon push the mash through the sieve. once you have pushed as much mash through as you can, scrape the pips and sandy extras out and dispose. Repeat this process until you have sieved all of the quince mash
Weigh the sieved mash and place in a slow cooker pot. Add three quarters of the weight of the quince in sugar to the slow cooker pot (eg. 750 grams sugar to 1kg quince)
Cook the quince paste stirring regularly until it is difficult to push a spoon through the paste, and it has turned a deep ruby colour. This will be about 6 hours on high, or 12 hours on low.
Storage
I have tried three different storage methods:
Pour the paste into a deep baking tray such as a lamington tray, lined with baking paper and allow to dry out in a warm spot, you may want to cover with more baking paper. The drying process may take several days. Once dry, cut up and wrap in baking paper and store an airtight container indefinitely. Works well, I have stored paste this way for up to 2 years, to be honest, I'm surprised that batch lasted so long.
Pour into super clean plastic containers and store in the fridge. Works but not my preferred method because it takes up fridge space.
Pour into sterilised jars, seal and store like jam. This storage method I am testing this year, so far so good!
Notes
Codling moth damage a lot of quince, signs of codling moth damage include tiny brown holes over the skin and black trails of poo left by caterpillars from the skin through to the core where they feed on the seeds. I generally get rid of any of the core and fruit that has these black crumbly trails.
If you find highly damaged fruit like this, never add to the compost, always burn, bin or feed to chickens, you do not want to infest or reinvest your fruit trees.
The process of pushing the fruit mash through a sieve is time consuming, it is worth the effort to produce a much smoother paste, but you can skip this step. If you are going to skip this step, you will need to add the pips and core to the initial cooking pot in a muslin bag, so you can easily remove, otherwise you will have pips in your paste. I set up a movie to keep me entertained while I sieve the fruit mash.
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