Freezing quince helps me out every year. I freeze quince for the winter in the fall season, when such firm yellow fruits are sold on almost every street corner. For example, last year there was very little quince and it was sold at an exorbitant price, but I had a blank from the year before last and helped me out a lot! For those who are not familiar with such a fruit, I want to say that it reveals its aroma and taste only after heat treatment - they do not eat fresh quince! More precisely, those who like the tart taste and dense stoneness of the fruit eat, but this is not about me.
I recommend freezing quince in baked and boiled form, but boil it in syrup. I do not make quince puree - it is easy to create from baked frozen pieces after they have been thawed at room temperature. The first option for freezing is obtained without sugar - I add such baked slices when cooking meat: pork, beef, chicken, lamb, etc. - the dishes are insanely delicious! The second option, which is frozen in syrup, is suitable for creating fillings for pies, pies, drinks or lemonades.
So, get the necessary ingredients and start cooking!
On the surface of the quince there is a very thick fleecy layer - it must be washed off with water, cleaning off with the hard side of the sponge.
Then put half of the quince fruits in a baking dish and bake in the oven at 200 ° C for about 30-40 minutes.
Remove, cool and cut each fruit into quarters. Remove seed blocks, cut into pieces.
Put the baked quince pieces in a bag and tie tightly, send to the freezer.
Quarter the remaining fruit and cut out the seed blocks. Act very quickly, as quince flesh oxidizes when exposed to air, becoming rusty. Rinse the pulp and cut into slices.
Put them in a container, add granulated sugar.
Pour in warm water, add a slice of lemon or replace it with citric acid - 2 pinches.
Boil the quince slices in the syrup for about 20 minutes, being careful not to overcook them. Turn off heat and cool. Pour into a container and freeze.
Freezing quince for the winter is fully completed. At the appropriate time, simply remove the frozen part and thaw at room temperature for 1-2 hours.
Good luck with your preparations!
Quince in Uzbekistan is harvested in November. Erkin Aka, executive-chef of the Khoja Nasreddin restaurant chain, tells how to choose it, how to store it and how to eat it.
- Are there many varieties of quince and how do they differ?- At present, several dozen varieties of quince are known, which differ from each other in the structure of flowers, leaves, fruit shape, flowering and fruiting time. But the differences between varieties of quince are much less significant and noticeable than between varieties of apples and pears. Quince is a shrub or tree that blooms from March to May with light pink flowers. The fruits of some varieties are more like apples in shape, the fruits of others are more like pears, they are always yellow - from lemon yellow to dark yellow, sometimes with a slight blush, and very dense, hard, crunchy. The pulp is slightly viscous, tart and quite fragrant - there is something from an apple in the smell, there is still a coniferous shade. The taste and smell of different varieties of quince is approximately the same, the difference is only in their concentration. But I am sure of one thing - the Central Asian varieties of quince are the sweetest and least tart.
- In which countries does quince grow?
- The homeland of quince is considered to be Transcaucasia and Central Asia, it is there that it is found in the wild. But at the same time, quince is one of the oldest fruit crops; people have been cultivating it for more than four thousand years. The ancient Greeks, by the way, treated the quince with deep reverence and considered it a symbol of beauty, love and fertility. Today, quince is grown in many countries of the world - in Europe, North America, North Africa, East and Central Asia. In Central Europe, however, quince is more often used for decorative purposes. Winter-hardy varieties have also been bred, which are successfully cultivated in the Volga region. And there is also the Japanese quince - in another way it is called chaenomeles. The flowers and fruits of this plant really look like quince, but that's a completely different story. Chaenomeles was brought to Europe from Japan at the end of the 17th century and gradually became one of the most beloved plants of gardeners - the Japanese quince blooms very beautifully. However, the fruits of chaenomeles are also edible, only they are more acidic.
— When is quince harvested and how long does it keep?
- The time for collecting quince in Uzbekistan is November, the later the better, but before the onset of frost. If you collect quince before the first frost, carefully wrap each fruit in paper and put it on straw, then quince can lie until March. The main thing is that the fruits are dry and intact, without dark spots - otherwise they will quickly begin to rot. When you buy quince, make sure that all the fruits are yellow - if there is a green tint, then it was taken from the unripe tree. To the touch, choose a quince that is softer, less hard. At home, quince should be stored in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator. The longer it lies, the tastier, more aromatic and softer it becomes, the content of sugar and acids in the fruits increases, the astringent taste disappears. No wonder they say that before you cook anything from quince, you need to let it mature. But do not be afraid to buy quince that has been caught by frost - it is softer and juicier. Now is the time for those who love to eat raw quince.
- Is quince eaten raw like an apple?
- Yes, just wash, wipe off the grayish fluff that covers the skin, cut into pieces and eat. In general, quince is a universal product. You can cook a lot of things from it - and add it to porridge, and to a salad, and to a sandwich, and to vegetable soup, and make a side dish, and a dessert, and a pie, and jam, and compote, and wine. In this respect, it is similar to a pumpkin - and, by the way, quince is no less useful. It strengthens the immune system, it is recommended for colds, bronchitis. It is said that quince has a positive effect on the psyche, improves mood, strengthens the heart, and stimulates appetite. Quince flower decoction is used in the treatment of gastric diseases, to lower pressure. Quince juice helps with a hangover. Even quince branches have been used in folk medicine - you can boil them and rinse your mouth with gum disease. Quince branches make excellent barbecue skewers, they give the meat a fragrant smell. And you can also hang a branch with four or five fruits in a room or in a wardrobe - the air will be filled with a refreshing pleasant smell, the clothes will be saturated with it.
- How would you advise cooking quince at home?
- In Uzbekistan, quince is most often added to pilaf, and it goes equally well with meat and dried fruits. To make a side dish, steam quince, deep-fry quince wedges, or stew with lemon juice, vanilla, or honey. Stewed quince is good to serve with meat, poultry, game. If you want a dessert, cut seeds out of quince, put butter and honey inside and bake in the oven. A great option to improve mood in chilly weather. Quince mustard - seasoning, it is prepared from quince and mustard with the addition of ginger and coriander. Quince cheese is called condensed quince juice with pulp. If you are going to cook compote or jam, you can add cherries and peaches, apples and pears. But even without additional ingredients, it turns out perfectly - during the cooking process, the quince becomes appetizingly pink, as if transparent, and noticeably more fragrant than in its raw form. Quince jam is perhaps one of the most fragrant - rose, honey, and citrus fruits are felt in the smell and taste. Jams and jams are also excellent. By the way, the word "marmalade" comes from the Portuguese name of the quince marmelo. A quince pie is also good - it is prepared in the same way as an apple pie, only the quince must first be boiled - for softness, and less sugar is needed, because it is sweeter.
Interviewed by Nadezhda SUKHOVA
It is very convenient to have frozen quince in the freezer, at any time you can mix it with sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and make a delicious aromatic filling for pancakes, pies and other pastries. Such a filling will arouse curiosity, and then delight - after all, most likely quince is not a frequent guest on your table. Children can add quince to cereals right during cooking, to tea or compotes, it can be prepared, you can make jelly based on quince broth, and also add it to other desserts.
To freeze grated quince, all you need is a quince, a grater and a few food-grade plastic bags.
Almost any fruit is suitable for freezing, unripe or too ripe, but in moderation. Quince is very fragrant, although it does not taste very good, hard and tart. But, having undergone heat treatment, it changes its properties beyond recognition. Just imagine the flavor your baked goods will exude. Before rubbing the quince on a grater, rinse it thoroughly, because there is a fluffy coating on its surface, which is easy to remove by rubbing the skin. If you notice that the quince has rotted in some places, then be sure to remove these places.
Ingredients:
- quince.
Cut the fruit into three or four parts, cut out the seed box, ponytails. Since quince is tough, you can turn to the stronger sex for help. 
Grate quince, this is much easier to do than it seems. Quince rubs surprisingly easily. However, you need to work quickly, because grated quince oxidizes very quickly in air and becomes dark. 
Prepare bags for storing fruit pulp in advance. Divide the grated quince into small portions so that later you do not have to defrost it to take a small part. Release the air from the bags and wrap. Feel free to send it to the freezer, the quince will take up very little space. 
In the freezer at sub-zero temperatures, frozen quince on a grater can be stored for a long time, several months, six months or even longer. But still, it is better to use it before the next harvest, then to prepare fresh fruit. We also advise you to take note of the freezing recipe.
Greetings, dear readers!
Autumn is a fertile time, giving us an abundance of healing fruits. Quince is a woody plant of the Rosaceae family, growing in the Mediterranean countries, in Asia, most of Europe, in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, as well as in both parts of America and in Australia.
Quince bears fruit with false apples of a spherical or pear-shaped yellow color. Let's talk about useful properties of quince and its application.
The pulp of the fruit has a strong pleasant aroma and a tough structure with many stony cells. The taste of quince is sweetish and at the same time tart-astringent. Unlike related pear and apple trees, fresh ripe fruits are not suitable for consumption and are even considered bad food for the intestines. But after cooking (compote, jam, jelly, jam), the pulp acquires an amazing sweet taste. Soft drinks are prepared from quince and used as a flavoring additive to meat dishes.
Composition of quince fruit
All parts of the plant - fruits, leaves, seeds, bark, young shoots, color are widely used in medical practice. Ripe fruits contain sugars, tannins, protopectin compounds, organic acids, fiber, antioxidants, essential oils, compounds of copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium and calcium. The vitamin composition of quince is represented by beta-carotene, retinol, ascorbic acid, tocopherol, thiamine, riboflavin, vitamin PP.
Useful properties of quince. Application in traditional medicine
Boiled grated fruits are prescribed by traditional medicine doctors for liver diseases. In the presence of cracks in the anus and the problem of prolapse of the rectum, lotions from the pulp or juice of fruits are considered one of the most effective remedies. Tea from seeds or pieces of fruit helps to stop bleeding, including uterine bleeding.
Baked or boiled quince pulp is recommended for use during toxicosis in pregnant women as an antiemetic. Fruit juice has antiseptic and antibacterial properties, its inclusion in the diet is advisable for patients suffering from respiratory diseases, including bronchial asthma. Freshly squeezed quince juice is prescribed for infertility, both female and male.
The diuretic and astringent properties of quince make it an indispensable product in the treatment of cystitis. Also, the fruits are useful for edema of cardiac and renal origin, pyelitis, nephrosis, nephritis. Due to the high content of iron and copper, fruits are successfully used to treat anemia, especially in combination with buckwheat, forest, alpine or sunflower.
Quince has a choleretic, antimicrobial, hematopoietic, cleansing, antioxidant, antiulcer, tonic, tonic effect on the body. The fruits are prescribed for food in case of poisoning of the body with heavy metals, since the cleansing properties of quince are much stronger than apricots. For a long time, with the help of fruits, diseases of the digestive tract have been healed.
Quince blanks for the winter
Freezing quince
The easiest way to save quince until the next harvest is to freeze it. In modern freezers, there is a very useful Express Freeze function, with the help of which fruit slices are cooled sharply, retaining a maximum of useful substances in the pulp.
The fruits are washed with water, washing off the villi from the surface, dried on a kitchen towel, cut into 4 parts, seed boxes are removed, chopped into medium-sized cubes, laid out in plastic bags, air is pumped out of them (this process can be carried out not only using a special device, but and a regular straw for cocktails) and put in the freezer, turning on the quick freeze mode.
Compotes, jelly, jelly are prepared from such quince, it is boiled and baked for medicinal purposes all year round. Also, frozen quince is a great seasoning for chicken. To prepare a spicy and appetizing bird with sourness according to the Uzbek recipe, it is coated with seasonings and salt (hot pepper or paprika, powdered coriander and cumin seeds), stuffed with frozen quince cubes (in the absence of fresh fruit), wrapped in foil and sent to a heated up to a temperature of 200 ° C oven for 1.5 hours.
Quince jam
For 3 kg of ripe fruit, you will need 1.5 kg of granulated sugar, 0.6 liters of drinking water and a coffee spoon of citric acid.
The washed fruits are divided into 4 parts to remove the seeds and the stony layer, cut into beautiful slices, poured with syrup (dilute the sugar with water in an enamel pan and bring to a boil), and boil after boiling for a quarter of an hour. Cool the jam and repeat the cooking procedure 2 more times. 5 minutes before the end of cooking, citric acid is added to the sweet mass. Hot jam is laid out in sterilized jars and rolled up with lids. The jam is stored at room temperature.
Pickled quince
Not 4 kg of mature quince you will need 1.35 kg of sugar, 2 liters of water, 260 ml of table vinegar (9%), a pinch of vanilla powder.
Rinse the fruits, cut into quarters, remove the seeds with a knife, cut into slices, send to a boiling marinade (sugar, water, vinegar, vanilla), boil for 10-12 minutes over low heat, remove the fruit with a slotted spoon and put in sterilized jars. Continue boiling the marinade until the volume is reduced by about half. Pour the quince slices with boiling liquid, sterilize the jars for 10 minutes and roll up the lids. Pickled quince is stored at room temperature or in the cellar.
Contraindications
All parts of the plant are contraindicated in patients suffering from chronic constipation and pleurisy. It is undesirable to use quince and dishes from it for speakers, singers, teachers, lecturers, since the pulp is harmful to the vocal cords and throat.
Prepare quince for the winter using our recipes, and you can fully enjoy the extraordinary taste and use all useful properties of quince for the human body. Be healthy! See you!
Proper storage of quince for the winter at home can provide us with these tasty and healthy fruits whenever we want to eat them. What could be better than fresh fruits in winter, given all their beneficial properties. Japanese quince is known in our area as a cross between a pear and an apple, but these are just associations. In fact, although this fruit is grown in Eastern Europe, it is exotic for us, but in Central Asia and southern Europe it is very popular. Quince or, as it is also called, the "golden apple" is the record holder among fruits in terms of the content of pectin and biologically active substances. The harvest of quince fruits falls in autumn, depending on the variety, it ripens from September to November. And now we will tell you more about how to save quince for the winter at home.
How to store quince
Keeping quince at home is not always possible. Before storing quince in an apartment, it is necessary to properly collect the fruits, namely:
- when collecting quince, you can’t press hard on it so as not to crush it, as it will begin to deteriorate;
- unripe quince can be left to ripen, but even among the ripened fruits it will ripen quite soon;
- unripe fruits can be put together with pears or apples, since storing quince with these fruits accelerates its ripening;
- quince harvesting is carried out only in dry weather, the ideal time for this is in the morning, but when there is no more dew.
Before storing quince at home, the fruits must be sorted out. An overripe quince is not suitable for storage, and one that was not removed from the branch, but picked up from the ground. Even barely noticeable damage to the peel, small dents and beginning rot - all these signs make it impossible to store quince for a long time.
- temperature — from 0 to 2°C;
- humidity - 80%;
- lack of light exposure.
Depending on the variety and climatic conditions, quince can be stored for 20 to 120 days. It will not deteriorate if it is up to 8 ° C above zero, but with an increase in temperature, the shelf life is also reduced.
Unripe, as well as large fruits will lie a little longer than all the others. How to keep quince fresh at room temperature? You can, of course, wrap it with paper or film, but it will not work for longer than 2-4 days. In such conditions, it is more likely to overripe than to remain. Therefore, unripe quince can be left outside the refrigerator, but until it ripens. The ideal place to store ripe fruit is best in a cellar, basement or refrigerator.
How to store quince in the refrigerator
Quince can be placed in the refrigerator until it finds a worthy use. For its storage, not only the fruit compartment is suitable, but also any of the shelves where the temperature is maintained from 0 to 8 ° C. To keep it there as long as possible, it is advisable to wrap each fruit tightly with foil, paper or cling film. It is necessary to stack the fruits so that they do not touch each other, as far as the dimensions of the refrigerator allow. So quince may not deteriorate for up to 3 months.
How to store cut quince
There is no need to even talk about storing cut quince. Like its "brothers" - pears or apples, it begins to deteriorate at the very moment when it is cut. If you tightly tighten the half-eaten quince fruit with cling film, you can eat it the next day, but no later. At the same time, the fruit should “spend the night” only in the refrigerator.
How to store quince in the freezer
Quince can be frozen, but not longer than 12 months, as the juiciness will gradually be lost. Before storing the fruits in the freezer, they must be cleaned of seeds and peel, and then cut into slices and put in an airtight food bag.
You can make puree and freeze it. It is better to use shock freezing, but this is usually not possible at home. After the quince slices are completely frozen, they can be divided and poured into a food container. Re-freezing, like any other product, quince is not subject to. By the way, freezing will soften its taste, and even get rid of unpleasant astringency.
Other ways to store quince
If there is a cellar, then it is better to send quince there. Humidity no more than 80%, lack of light, good air circulation, and a sufficiently low temperature will prevent these fruits from rotting for up to 4 months. Preliminary quartzization of the cellar will make the quince shelf life even longer. Before storing quince in the cellar:
- it cannot be washed;
- must be wiped with a dry clean cloth;
- wrap each fruit with foil or paper;
- you can process the fruits with wax.
In the cellar, quince should be in a separate box. So that the fruits do not come into contact with each other, you can pour layers of sand or sawdust, which also prevent the appearance of unwanted moisture.
If there are no conditions for storing quince, you can cook delicious drying from it. You can dry quince outdoors, if the weather is dry, in an oven at 75°C or in a special fruit dryer. The quince is cleaned and cut into small pieces, you can also put it under a press for a while or blanched before drying, but this is not necessary. Ready dried fruits are stored in a container that can be tightly closed. Do not put dried quince in linen bags or plastic bags, as insects are very fond of eating dried fruits.
Quince fruits that are not suitable for long-term storage must be processed as soon as possible. Compotes, jams, jam with quince pieces - all this is extremely tasty and, no doubt, deserves your time.
