topping & tailing

fryup

I've a huge amount of blackcurrants and redcurrants and goseberries, which is all fine and dandy until "her indoors" wants them topped & tailed ready to make jam:o

And as you all know its a pain in the ..... so i'm just wondering (and praying) is there any machine/device out there that can do the job??

looksee

Freeze them first then shake them around hard frozen and the tails (of currents anyway) will come off, with a little encouragement.

Currants you can help along by getting a wide-tined dinner fork and running it through the bunches to strip off most of them.

Gooseberries we mostly did by hand, but again if you can manage the cold, its easier to do when they are frozen.

Edit - gooseberries make wonderful wine, and you don't have to worry about topping and tailing...

Qwerty?

We got our 3 & 6 year old at the table the other day and they top and tailed 6 pounds of gooseberries in just over an hour, and they loved it.... wonder how many years we will get before they realise it isn't as much fun as they thought it was

looksee

We had blackcurrents, gooseberries and raspberries and strawberries. They all seemed to be in full fruit just as we were about to go off on holiday, so I was making jam during the week before we went. Our kids were conscriped to pick gooseberries and blackcurrents, which they did with an amazing lack of enthusiasm.

Then I started freezing the fruit and making jam as I needed it, but because no one wanted gooseberry or blackcurrent jam it would sit in the press, and the following year I would throw out loads of fruit to freeze the next lot.

So we removed all but a couple of the gooseberries plus one that got in accidentally and had luscious huge dessert gooseberries which you could eat like plums, and also just left one blackcurrent, and it was loads!

The raspberries and strawberries, needless to say, were no problem, between the birds and the kids there was never a surplus.

irlpic

I never top and tail for jam making. The ends i was told are needed for making pectin (spelling) which helps the jam set.

kylith

That's the only advice I can give you.

Oh, and Looksee; if you wanted to send me on some gooseberry jam I wouldn't complain.