Removing fruit stones...

[offcentre]

Any advice for removing stones from stewed fruit?

We make a fair amount of chutney, jams and fruit leathers from small, foraged fruit such as damsons and sloes. Lovely, but incredibly time consuming removing stones from a stewed fruit mess. Not a particularly enjoyable task either.

Any tips, other than donning the rubber gloves and sorting by hand? Its generally too thick to move through a colander or sieve, even to push through with a wooden spoon.

thanks

[pastrygirl]

Does the fruit need to be whole, or can you cut it in half and remove the stones before cooking?

[Darienne]

A hand-cranked food mill? I use one to remove apple seeds or raspberry seeds using different discs. Would something like that work?

[janeer]

And you didn't remove them before cooking because...?

[offcentre]

I didn't remove them before cooking because it takes longer to do this than to remove afterwards! These are small stoned fruit, hundreds in the pot at once. Stones stuck firm to fruit, so I lose some of the fruit when stoning like this. Good question though

I don't know what a food mill is, but a quick search and it looks like this will take the whole fruit into the mill and grind it all up, stones and all....no?

[Mjx]

How about a food mill? If you want a chunkier texture to your finished product, you might pick through the fruit by hand until you get bored, then put the rest through the food mill.

[Shalmanese]

The filter only has to be as fine as the smallest thing you're filtering out so I wonder if you could use one of those coarse plastic mesh bags (like the kind they use to bundle onions or lemons) to squeeze the pulp out and leave the stones. Just load up a bag and twist to squeeze into a large pail until only the stones remain in the bag.

[threestars]

How about a food mill? If you want a chunkier texture to your finished product, you might pick through the fruit by hand until you get bored, then put the rest through the food mill.

I do that most of the time, pick through the fruit by hand. And food mill works good.

[offcentre]

hmm, I like the idea of a bag with holes just smaller than the stones. And I still don't know what a food mill is but I shall investigate further.

Thanks very much.

[Darienne]

Here is what one looks like.

[offcentre]

ahhhh, okay...thanks Darienne.

Will this work? Won't the stones clog up the mechanism...loads of stones under the plate?

[Darienne]

As it begins to get clogged, you simply reverse the turning handles...all the pits and stones will be scooped to the top of the metal plate and you can fish them out.

[offcentre]

order going in now. thanks Darienne.