Trouble processing mayhaws

[son rising]

Hello . My wife and I just bought an attachment for our kitchenaid mixer to prosess mayhaws and it worked good on about 15 lbs and then proceded to break . Can anyone suggest a better way to do this ? What should we use ? Thank you very kindly , son rising .

[Mama Mangia]

are you making jelly?

[son rising]

Yes we are and thank you for replying .

[Mama Mangia]

Do you have a food processor? Try smaller batches. And give it a rest every so often.

[The Ironic Chef]

I have a type of food mill that I use for proccesing tomatoes and such for canning. There is a large hopper on top and it looks like a meat grinder. Where the product comes out there are several cone shaped screens that allow for certain puree thicknesses. In the center of the cone the seeds and skins are ejected. It works great and I can do so much fruit very quickly. It also works very well as a juicer. For grinding harder fruits like pears and such I just par boil them a bit.

The grinder is made by Presto and can be seen on their internet site. When I bought it about 8 years ago it cost about $50.00 and is very well built.

[The Ironic Chef]

To save you from searching, here is what I have..
shopgoodwill.com - #5117112 - <I>Presto</I> Food Strainer and Sauce Maker - 8/17/2009 5:45:00 PM

[son rising]

Thank you both for your replys . We have a large kitchenaid mixer with the hopper attachment that has screen . We just bought this two days ago . But after running 15 lbs of mayhaws thru it the seeds must have jamed and broke it . My question is ; does someone have a better way that we can process the mayhaws or does someone know of a better processor to use ? Thanks , son rising .

[Dilbert]

a silly question, but.... the berries are cooked prior to processing, right?
uncooked is likely to cause a raft of issues.

a lot of recipes call for cooking/cooling and just squeezing the juice out essentially by hand using cheesecloth.

if you've broken the conical screen on the food mill attachment, might be you are trying to squeeze it too dry.

the really old fashion food mills - looks like a pot with holes in the bottom, an auger and a handle - are spring loaded. very forgiving in terms of processing seeds, hulls, skins, etc. when it screen is clogged you reverse the rotation and scrape out the pulp.

>>15 pounds....
that's gonna make a heap o'jelly!

[son rising]

Thank you kindly for this info . We were not told to cook the mayhaws first and then process . But that makes alot of sense now that you mention it . How long would you cook them for before trying to process ? And , do you have any other suggestions you could offer as this is only our second time to do this ? Before we bought the attachment that just broke , my wife used a funnel looking screen and a wooden ( I forget the name of it ) with a taper to it and did the processing by hand . Also the seeds seem to be what built up in the end of the screen and broke the auger . Will the cooking help with this problem ? Also if you or someone else would like to have some mayhaws next year let me know as we are close to a local farm . Again , thank you so very much for all your help , son rising .

[Dilbert]

>>not cooked.
oh dear....

certainly I have not encountered every recipe and method, but - all I am aware of start out with "boil until soft, then cool" - something on the order of 2-3 hours boiling.

the theory is to then extract the juice from the softened fruit, the seeds / skin / pulp is discarded.