Making Karin Fruit Paste (or Jam?)

    A few weeks ago, back in early winter, I bought a discounted bag of three karin fruit, also known as Japanese quince, and spent a lot of time afterward wondering what to do with them. Eventually I stumbled upon a 2009 NPR article with recipes that I thought could work, including a quince paste which seems to look like a fruit leather of some kind, so I decided to give it a go.

    I did try a raw slice of the meat of the karin, despite all recipes I had found suggesting that the fruit isn't really edible raw. The taste was 80% white rind pulp, such as from the inside of a grapefruit rind, and 20% peach. Inedible, yes, but also interesting.

That's about two cups, right?

    My biggest problem with starting these instructions was they relied on an amount of fruit that I didn't necessarily have. I did not actually measure how much of the diced fruit I had when I started this, but I estimated about two cups and adjusted the rest from there. Another problem was making this in winter. At the end, the instructions say to leave the fruit paste to dry in a warm, dry place, two descriptors that have nothing to do with Northern Japan in January or February. It even suggests leaving the pan of cooling, drying paste in the sun, which I assume works somewhere on earth but probably not here. At least the beginning didn't seem too hard.

    The instructions I read over included using a food processor, something I do not personally have, so I instead made use of my blender and a potato masher. It's not perfect, but it was the best I could do. First off, dicing the fruit into smaller chunks will make it become paste a little bit faster. I did not dice things evenly and instead just boiled what I had. After the initial boiling time stated in the recipe, I stopped the heat and let it sit, but then had to make dinner so the rest of the paste making had to wait in the fridge till the next day.

    I dumped the water and chunks into the blender and tried to blend as best I could, but the resulting paste was still a little bit extra chunky in places. As instructed, I transferred what I had into a pot and warmed it up before mixing in sugar that I had adjusted from the original recipe. To make this lower calorie, substituting the sugar for honey or another low cal alternative may be beneficial.

The sieve wasn't so useful here as the paste was already too thick for it.

    I tried to squish the chunks that I could find in the pot while I was mixing in the sugar but some still got through and my attempts to squish occasionally wound up with me covered in quince bits.

    My least favorite part of this particular recipe was that it called for stirring continuously for 40 minutes. I don't know about you, but I rarely have 40 solid minutes to do any one thing. Still, I did my best and as it simmered, it did thicken over time.

    Then I poured it into a oiled pan that fits in my microwave on the oven setting, evening out the density before I placed it inside on the lowest heat setting of 40 degrees for the longest time option of 90 minutes. It was still pretty wet at that point so I put it in at the same temperature for the same time. 



    After three hours on 40 degrees, it's still the consistency of jam. I don't have it in me to get up regularly during the night to keep restarting the oven, so instead, I am calling it a day. Karin Jam it is! The flavor is light and peachy with no hint of the raw bitterness. It's not too sweet either.


Like fruit leather? No. Like jam, but slightly less sticky.

    I wound up leaving it out overnight, after which the texture was a little more dry but not enough to eat the way the article had claimed. I left it in the fridge for a week then moved it to a sealed container, finally trying it like apple sauce with a touch of cinnamon and microwaved for 30 seconds. 



    It didn't taste bad and was actually quite enjoyable, but left me with an upset stomach not entirely unlike the hot beverage made from the karin peel and seeds. It might be simply that the karin fruit and my stomach do not get along.

    Still, this is probably healthier than ice cream.