Apples and crabapples are prize finds for the urban forager in late summer and autumn. While many people can identify an apple or apple tree on sight, crabapples often present a little more of a challenge, and many people worry about the edibility of crabapples too. We’ll get to all that.
Here are some of the common species of apples and crabapples:
Apples: Malus domestica (domesticated from a mix of crabapple species, identified by a variety of species names including M. pumila and M. communis)
Crabapples: Malus sylvestris (European crabapple), M. fusca (Oregon crabapple), M. sieversii (Central Asia/Kazakhstan), M. baccata (Siberian crabapple), and others.
Are Crabapples Poisonous?
No, crabapples are not poisonous. Some varieties of crabapple have very small fruit that one could mistake for inedible fruit! The larger the crabapple, the harder it would be, in my opinion, to mistake it for something else. But crabapples themselves, of any size, are not poisonous. In fact, crabapples can be delicious! The variety I’ve photographed above tastes a lot like a Granny Smith apple.
You’ll also hear that apple (and crabapple) seeds contain cyanide and you shouldn’t eat them. However, that’s not quite true.
Apple seeds contain a compound called amygdalin which, in our stomachs, can break down and become cyanide.
But as Islamiyat Folashade Bolarinwa, a senior lecturer in food science at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology in Nigeria, told NPR, you’d have to chew the seeds extremely well for this breakdown to happen, and you’d have to eat the seeds of anywhere from 18 to 40 apples all at once!
If you were drinking cider or consuming another food where seed bits may have been crushed into the final product, the risk is tiny (you’d have to drink 20 liters of cider).
In conclusion: don’t worry about it! But also don’t try to give yourself cyanide poisoning.
Identification Notes
The easiest way to identify a crabapple is to cut it in half before you eat it. It should look like an apple, with a thin tough skin, dense flesh, and seeds in the middle, and it should smell like an apple, sweet and tart.
Just like apples, crabapple cultivars are bred for different flower colors, fruit colors, and even leaf colors. In addition, leaf and fruit shapes and sizes can vary by species. When in doubt, don’t eat it right away – take it home, do some plant identification sleuthing online.
Harvesting
Look for apple and crabapple trees on vacant lots, in abandoned or unmaintained wooded green spaces, in parks, and in your neighbors’ yards.
Apple trees outside of a commercial orchard are subject to a variety of potential pests, including worms, fungi, and bacteria. For this reason, I prefer to use harvested apples in cooked recipes. I may need to do a lot of slicing, coring, and peeling to get down to the usable bits. But that’s not always the case!
In particular, any apple that falls on the ground during picking should be washed and cooked before eating. I’ve never had any problem with eating a good-looking apple off the ground, but the longer an apple sits there, the higher the likelihood it’s exposed to feces or bacteria or any number of things you don’t want to put in your mouth. Look out for yourself and others.
An apple picker is an absolutely invaluable tool if you do a lot of apple or large crabapple harvesting. Mine has an aluminum telescoping pole that extends up to 12 feet! You lift the tines over the fruit and pull down to detach it from the tree. You can pick lots of fruit without a ladder this way. Highly recommended.
Crabapple-Apple Wine Recipe
I have cobbled together this recipe from multiple sources of Jack Keller, famous among home winemakers for his “country” wines and homebrewed wines (as well as traditional grape wines and champagne).
He kept a truly encyclopedic winemaking website during the 1990s and 2000s, and also wrote a book, Home Winemaking (Bookshop.org affiliate link), which was published after his death. The book, in my opinion, is pretty different from the website, with the book recipes using more specialty winemaking ingredients. However, the book maintains Jack Keller’s distinctive voice, and his commitment to making wine out of anything. I think that’s something foragers can really appreciate!
For the past few years I have been iterating on Jack Keller’s Asian apple-pear wine recipe, and this year I made it with crabapples too! I added some knowledge I gleaned from his book, but this recipe comes in large part from his website, which is mostly archived on the Internet Archive.
Never made wine before? You can follow the below recipe but you may have questions about the processes or terms used. Consult Jack Keller’s winemaking process descriptions or UGA Extension’s Winemaking at Home page for more information (not all steps are relevant to this particular recipe).
The timeframe for making a decent wine is at least one year. Patience is key!
Equipment needed
- Large pot holding at least 2 gallons
- Something to mash or squeeze fruit with (such as a potato masher [Jack suggested a 4″ x 4″ piece of hardwood!]) while it’s inside the nylon straining bag
- Nylon straining bag
- Primary fermentation container (2 gallon bucket with lid is best)
- Secondary fermentation container (such as a 1 gallon glass or plastic carboy)
- Airlock with plug to fit your secondary fermentation container
- Siphon hose with bottle filler cane
- Bottling equipment of your choice (bottles with appropriate fliptops, bottle caps, wine corks, etc.)
- Sanitizer for bottles and caps
Ingredients (don’t mix these all together, follow the instructions!)
- 3 lbs granulated sugar
- 3 quarts water
- 4 lbs washed and chopped apples (depending on the quality of the picked apples, you may need 5-6 lbs of apples to get 4 lbs of good fruit)
- 1 lb washed and chopped crabapples (again, you may need to start with more crabapples than listed to get 1 lb of good fruit)
- 6 oz chopped golden raisins
- 1 tsp malic acid
- 1 tsp tartaric acid
- 1 crushed Campden tablet
- 1 tsp yeast nutrient
- 1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
- 1/2 tsp (if splitting the packet amongst multiple wines) or 1 packet Red Star Cote des Blancs yeast (or Lalvin BA11) (I have also used Red Star Cuvee)
- 1/4 tsp Irish moss (optional)
Instructions
Boil the water and dissolve the sugar in the large pot.
Put chopped crabapples, apples and raisins in a large nylon straining bag. Tie bag and put in pot with sugar water.
Mash apples and crabapples lightly with a masher, blunt end of a rolling pin or wine bottle, or other implement.
Bring sugar water back up to almost boiling, then turn off, cover loosely, and leave to cool for 2 hours.
Transfer the nylon bag of fruit and sugar water into the primary bucket and cover. (Until you transfer your wine to secondary fermentation, always cover loosely with a towel or lid, do not seal the bucket! If your lid has a hole drilled for the airlock, you can cover it or plug it with a napkin or cotton ball.)
Let cool to room temperature (or overnight).
Add crushed Campden tablet, malic acid, tartaric acid, and yeast nutrient. Cover primary bucket, wait 12 hours, and add pectic enzyme. Cover primary, wait another 12 hours and add yeast. Cover.
Over the next 7 days, stir the mixture daily, squeezing bag gently with clean hands.
After 7 days, remove bag and squeeze out juice gently into the primary.
Allow to settle for another day.
Siphon into glass carboy and add water to fill carboy to 1 inch from the top. Install airlock. Store in a cool, not cold or freezing, place if at all possible.
After two weeks, rack and refit airlock.
In two months, rack again. If wine is not clear (looks hazy), add 1/4 tsp Irish moss, mix thoroughly, and let sit.
Finally, rack once more two months later. Stabilize the wine (stop fermentation), wait 10 days, and add 1/8 to 1/4 pound sugar (depending on your taste) dissolved in water–2 parts sugar to one part water. (If the wine is not stabilized at this point, adding sugar will cause fermentation to start again and can lead to fizzy wine. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but if you want still wine, make sure it’s stable!)
Bottle and age at least six months, and up to a few years!
Serve chilled.
Sources and Further Reading
- GoBotany Native Plant Trust: Malus
- Wikipedia: Malus
- Jack Keller’s Winemaking Home Page on the Internet Archive
- Home Winemaking by Jack Keller (Bookshop.org affiliate link)
- UGA Cooperative Extension: Winemaking at Home