Jam Making - 101

I love this time of year in Nova Scotia .. fresh fruits start coming into season and I get busy in my kitchen making a pile of jams. I do what is called "small batch preserving" as they are more easily managed .. AND .. you can actually use fresh fruits in season OR good quality frozen in the offseason.

This method is so easy that anybody can make jam with this recipe .. ANYBODY. I started doing this 10 years ago .. and I make damned fine jams .. if'n I *do* say so m'self. :D

Also .. I make my jams the good old fashioned way like my dear grandmother always did .. the way they were made BEFORE people started adding apple pectin to thicken them and started using liquid glucose for sweetening .. and it is without a doubt THE easiest method you can imagine. 3 of us are very allergic to apples .. and glucose is VERY bad for my blood sugars .. so I was delighted when this was passed on to me. :)

This has got to be the LEAST labor intensive jam making you can imagine. I will explain how I do this .. and it's gonna be the method as I do it .. so not your cut and dried usual recipe/method. :)

Some essential equipment you will need is a tall stock pot (at least 8 inches deep) for the hot water canning bath (I got an inexpensive stainless steel one for 20 bucks) .. 1 cup jars with caps and rings (about 6 for this recipe but it may be slightly more or less depending on how it cooks up so I always prep 7 .. just in case) .. jar lifting tongs for placing and removing the bottled jams from the sterilization bath .. small tongs to remove the empty jars, rings and lids from the boiling water (there is a magnet lifter you can get but I find the small tongs more useful) .. a special wide ended funnel that sits snuggly in the jar tops .. a cake cooling rack .. a good ladle .. a heavy bottomed 6 or 8 litre/quart cooking pot (I use a really nice KitchenAid one from a set that we got with a swap out for a defective coffee maker) .. a cheap cherry pitter is handy and a good LONG handled wooded spoon.

If you look around you can get inexpensive canning kits which have most of the items with it .. also there are canning bath pots with removable racks to set the jars in .. but I use the stock pot and jar tongs which work just fine and cost much less.

Before you start .. I would recommend that you NOT wear any clothes that you actually *might* want to wear out in public again. O_o

Strawberry - Cherry Jam

This should make about 6 - 1 Cup jars.

If at all possible use the deepest .. ripest .. sweetest fruits you can find .. and prep them while still garden warm if using fresh.

Wash and dry the fruit BEFORE you hull the strawberries and pit the cherries .. this way you will not lose any of those lovely juices.

5 Cups of Fresh ripe Strawberries
5 Cups of Fresh ripe Cherries
4 Cups of Organic Cane Sugar Extract (you *could* use white sugar .. but .. why .. WHY?? would you want to ?!?! O_O )

After washing and drying .. remove the hulls from the strawberries .. and remove the pits from the cherries.

I fill a 2 litre/quart Pyrex measuring cup .. to about 2 cups above the 2 quart line .. with whatever combination of strawberry to cherries I am in the mood for .. usually 50/50 but that can vary.

Dump them into at least a 6 litre/quart stockpot .. 8 is better but not necessary.

Add 4 cups of organic cane sugar extract (this looks just like regular sugar but slightly brownish and tastes much nicer than the white stuff). I get it in a 1 litre/quart sized container and dump the whole thing over the fruit.

Cut .. or mash but cutting is easier ;) .. the berries up as coarse or as fine as you want them by running a very sharp knife through them in the pot .. this lets the juices flow out of them and helps the sugar dissolve into a nice clear syrup .. and stir until the sugar is wet. Cover and let sit in your fridge for 24 hours .. ish .. stirring as often as you happen to think of it.

After 24 hours you will have a lovely syrupy berry mix.

Now .. at this point I often take a wand blender and puree (or partially puree) the lot of it .. just my personal preference for the texture of jams that we like here .. choice is yours .. but it DOES make for a nice jam. :)

Stir the berry/syrup mix well and place on a larger burner on your stove .. setting the burner to just above 7 .. I don't know how to say it otherwise as the knobs on my stove are numbered and I set it slightly above 7 toward 8 to get my best cooking heat for this.

Bring to a nice boil and .. stirring often to keep it from thickening too much on the bottom of the pot .. let boil for about 20 to 25 minutes. It will boil up into a foamy mass at one point for a few minutes .. this is normal .. just stir well until it settles back down .. and is thickened .. and continue boiling. Using a nice long handled wooden spoon is essential with this as there will be a good deal of spattering upward of VERY HOT jam .. so be EXTRA careful while doing this. Skimming is NOT necessary because of the next step.

At this point .. remove from the heat .. cover and let rest for another 24 hours in your fridge.

After this 24 hours .. take clean jars, lids and rings .. and place them in a pot of boiling water that covers them completely .. fill a kettle and get it boiling .. and finally place the tall stock pot on the stove and fill to halfway with water that also is brought to a boil.

Place the pot of cooked fruit on the stove and bring to a boil for 5 minutes stirring often. The variation depends on how thick you want your jam.

Using the jar tongs .. lift out the jars and place them upside down on a rack .. grab the lids and rings as you need them with the smaller tongs. Flip a jar over .. place the wide funnel into the top of the jar and scoop in 1 cup of the boiled fruit mixture. Cap and add the ring .. turning to just secure but NOT tight. Using the large bottle tongs .. place the jar into the large stock pot of boiled water.

Bottle and cap the rest of the jam .. you may or may not need to put the extra in the 7th jar which gives you a part jar which I cap as normal and use first for .. erm .. quality control testing purposes. ;)

Once all the jars are in the stock pot .. make sure that the water covers them completely .. adding more from the boiled kettle as needed .. then turn back on to boil and let boil for 10 minutes.

At that time .. using the bottle tongs .. lift the jars out .. place on a rack .. and WITH GREAT CARE .. using oven mitts OR silicon cooking gloves .. tighten the rings as much as you can. You will hear the tops make a *pop* sound from the suction as they cool forming an airtight seal. Check periodically and retighten the rings. Once you can handle the jars .. place them in your fridge .. or if you are lucky enough to have one .. in a "cold" storage room.

This tastes GREAT served over ice cream .. as well as on your toast. ;)

Variations on this recipe that turn out excellent jams are :

10 Cups of Strawberries - First cooking 25 - 30 minutes / second 10 minutes

OR

10 Cups of Cherries - First cooking 15 - 20 minutes / second 5 minutes

OR

8 Cups of Blueberries - First cooking 15 - 20 minutes / second 5 minutes

OR

10 Cups of Plums (of your choice as they ALL make lovely jams) - First cooking 20 - 25 minutes / second 5

OR

10 Cups of Raspberries/Blackberries - First cooking 20 - 25 minutes / second 5 - 10

OR

10 Cups of ANY berry combination that you like :) - First cooking 20 - 30 minutes / second 5 - 10

I have used this method for 10 years now .. and have NEVER had a problem or anything resembling a "bad" batch. The jams are tasty .. full colored and quite delicious. I have successfully made them using fresh fruit .. and also frozen berries .. ALWAYS with perfect results.

Cooking times can vary .. I am at a point now that I go by the look and sound of the thickening mixture and adjust accordingly .. but .. the times I've given are a good guideline as I took note while making these current batches.

I actually start one batch every day so that I am turning out a batch a day for about 2 weeks or so .. until I am done. The small batch approach is amazingly efficient with this easy, old style method. The short cooking times .. combined with the long resting periods allow the fruits to develope their own natural gelatin .. the way jams USED to be made before they speeded the process up by adding apple pectin to get them to artificially thicken faster. I understand that you can add about a quarter cup of lemon juice to the mixture IF there is a problem with the gelatin formation .. but have never found it necessary to do so.

Back to the jam making .. I have 1 batch of strawberry/cherry left to finish today that MC is chomping at the bit for .. and one batch of cherry to finish tomorrow .. then done until wild blueberries come in in late August .. and also I do have a nice cauliflower/cucumber mustard relish I will be making in much larger batches starting about then too.

I hope you give this a try as it really is so easy and the effort is well worth the final product. :)