Jams and Marmalades
Find a Marmalade Recipe here
How to Make Jam
Making your own jam is quite easy. Scroll down this page to find out how. These directions work equally well for strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, boysenberry, dewberry, gooseberry, loganberry, marionberry, peach, plum, damson plum, tayberry, youngberry, etc.; by themselves or mixed berry jam.
Ingredients
* Fruit - preferably fresh, but frozen (without syrup) is fine.
* Pectin (available from supermarkets, or make your own)
* Jar funnel
* Sugar - About 4 cups of dry, granulated (table) sugar.
* Lemon juice - 1/4 cup per batch. While it is not always necessary, as many fruits and berries have sufficient acidity to ensure a good gel or "set", many cooks add it just to make sure, and it does not affect the flavour.
Equipment
* At least one very large pot or saucepan.
* Large spoons and ladles
* Heat-proof mats for standing hot jars on
* Empty glass jars with matching lids. (Save all your jars throughout the year - jam jars, spaghettio sauce jars, coffee jars etc. Smallish jars are much better than large ones.)
* Oven mitt (to pick up the hot jars)
* Long-handled wooden spoon (for stirring hot jam)
Optional stuff:
* Food Mill - not necessary; useful if you want to remove seeds (from blackberries) or make applesauce.
Jam-making Directions
This example shows you how to make Berry Jam, but you can use this recipe to make any type of jam; where there is a difference, we will point it out! The yield from this recipe is about eight 250 gram jars.
Step 1 - Gather your fruit.
How much fruit? Jam can ONLY be made in rather small batches - about 6 cups at a time. DO NOT increase the recipes or the jam won't "set" (jell, thicken). (WHY? Pectin can overcook easily and lose its thickening properties. It is easier and faster to get an even heat distribution in smaller batches. It takes about 8 cups of raw, unprepared berries per batch. For triple berry jam, use 4 cups of mushed (slightly crushed) strawberries, 1 cup of raspberries and 1 cup of blackberries. For strawberry-only jam; you’ll need 6 cups of mushed strawberries.
Step 2 - Wash the jars and lids in hot soapy water, rinse in clean water and allow them to drain.
Step 3 -Wash the fruit in cold water and pick off any hulls, stems, leaves etc.
Step 4 - Crush the fruit (for berries) or slice the fruit (for stone fruit etc). If using berries, mush them up a bit - not completely crushed, but mostly. Most people seem to like large chunks of fruit but crushing them releases the natural pectin so it can thicken. You'll need about 6 cups, mushed up. If you want seedless jam, you may need to run the crushed berries through a food mill. It works well for blackberries, not so well for raspberries, and no one tries to remove strawberry seeds (they're so small).
Why use pectin? Pectin, which occurs naturally in fruit, is what makes the jam "set" or thicken. The pectin you buy is just natural apple pectin, more concentrated. Using pectin dramatically reduces the cooking time, which helps to preserve the vitamins and flavor of the fruit, and uses much less added sugar. Having said that, there are some fruits that have naturally high amounts of pectin (see this page for a list) and they simply don't need much or even any padded pectin.
Notes about pectin: many people usually add about 20% more pectin (just open another pack and add a little) or else the jam can be rather runny. With a little practice, you'll find out exactly how much pectin to get the thickness you like.
Step 7 - Add the remaining sugar and bring to a boil again for 1 minute
When the berry-pectin mix has reached a full boil, add the rest of the sugar (about 4 cups of sugar per 6 cup batch of berries) and then bring it back to a boil and boil hard for 1 minute... If you bring it back to a full boil fairly slowly (on medium heat rather than high) that will help reduce foaming. Remove from the heat.
Step 8 - Skim any excessive foam
Foam... What is it? Just jam with a lot of air from the boiling. But it tastes more like, well, foam, that jam, so most people remove it. It is harmless, though. Some people add 1 teaspoon of butter or margarine to the mix in step 6 to reduce foaming, but food experts debate whether that may contribute to earlier spoilage, so we usually omit it and skim.
But save the skimmed foam! You can recover jam from it to use fresh!
Step 9 - Testing for "jell" (thickness)
Keep a metal tablespoon sitting in a glass of ice water, then take a half spoonful of the mix and let it cool to room temperature on the spoon. If it thickens up to the consistency you like, then you know the jam is ready. If not, mix in a little more pectin (about 1/4 to 1/2 of another package) and bring it to a boil again for 1 minute.
Notes about "set" (thickening or jell): It takes 3 ingredients for jams and jellies to set: pectin, sugar and acidity. The amount of pectin that is naturally occurring in the fruit varies from one type of fruit to another and by ripeness (counter intuitively, unripe contains more pectin). It takes the right balance, and sufficient amounts of each of pectin, sugar and acidity to result in a firm jam or jelly. Lastly, it takes a brief period (1 minute) of a hard boil, to provide enough heat to bring the three together. Generally speaking, if your jam doesn't firm up, you were short in pectin, sugar or acidity or didn't get a hard boil. That's ok - you can "remake' the jam.
Step 10 - Sterilise your jars and lids with almost boiling water, pour out the water and stand the jars on heat proof mats with their lids ready beside them.
Step 11 - Put the funnel into each jar in turn and ladle in the hot jam. Only add one ladleful at a time, then go on to the next jar, leaving the first jar to heat up with the small amount in it. If you completely fill a glass jar with hot jam in one go, it might crack. Fill them to within a centimetre of the top, screw the lid on tightly, wipe offf any spilled jam and invert them. Allow the jars to cool upside down with the lids on.
Step 12 - Once the jars are cool, you can check that they are sealed by verifying that the lid has been sucked down. Just press in the center, gently, with your finger. If it pops up and down (often making a popping sound), it is not sealed. If you put the jar in the refrigerator right away, you can still use it.
Step 13 - The jars are ready to label and store. They last up to 12 months, but after about 6 to 8 months, they get darker in color and may start to get runny. They still are safe to eat, but the flavor and texture aren't as good. So eat them in the first 6 months after you prepare them. Another trick is to keep the uncooked berries or other fruit in the freezer and make and bottle the jam as needed.
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