Making Jam!

During the summer of 2012, I was visiting my grandma (Memaw) in North Carolina. I was reading an issue of Southern Living, and there was an article about canning. I decided I wanted to learn how to can, so my grandma and I made some strawberry jam together. It seemed like an intimidating process, but it was really fun and I was hooked! When I got home to New Jersey, I started doing a lot of research and reading about canning. My grandma had given me a large pot that I could use for processing the jars, and I had a set of canning tools that only cost about $10. The rest of that summer and fall, I canned several batches of jam, salsa, and fruit butters. I discovered a great canning blog, bought a couple books, and I haven’t looked back!

Jam is one of my favorite things to can. It requires only a few ingredients and it’s easy to make. On Wednesday I made Cherry-Plum jam from Marisa McClellan’s excellent book Food in Jars. I cut the recipe in half and ended up with about 3 1/2 half pint jars of jam. If you don’t want to do the water bath canning process, you can make this and freeze it instead. It tastes amazing!! If you’d like to process the jars to be shelf stable, here’s a link to detailed directions on the Ball jar website. Lately, for these smaller batches, I haven’t even bothered pulling out my canning pot. I’ve just been using my 12-quart stockpot. As long as your pot is tall enough for your jars plus 1 inch of water above the jars, you’ll be fine with a regular pot. I bought a silicone trivet to put in the bottom of the pot to protect the jars while they’re boiling. This is also the purpose of a canning rack, like in this kit or this metal rack. As long as you have something at the bottom of your pot, it will be fine.

Cherry-Plum Jam

Makes almost 4 half pints… this is the recipe as I made it, which is a half batch of the recipe as it is written in the book.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups pitted and chopped plums (this will be about 1 1/2 lbs)
• 2 cups pitted and chopped sweet cherries (this was a little less than a pound of cherries) (I use a paper clip to pit the cherries)
• 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
• zest and juice of half a lemon
• 1 packet of liquid pectin

Directions:

1) Chop all the fruit and get out your tools 🙂

2) Wash and dry your jars, lids, and rings. Put the jars and rings in your large stockpot or canning pot. Cover completely with water. Start heating this on high on the stove; it needs to boil by the time you are ready to take the jars out to be filled. Put the canning lids in a small saucepan, cover completely with water, and put it over low heat. You want these to just barely simmer, which is what’s recommended by the Ball jar company to help them seal.

3) Put all the fruit and sugar into a large pot or skillet. Something low and wide is best. You can see the large skillet that I like to use in these pictures. Bring to a boil and cook for about 20 minutes. This time can vary depending on your pot. You want the jam to look thick and syrupy.

right after putting the fruit and sugar into the pot

 

After a few minutes of cooking

4) Add the lemon zest, juice, and pectin to the pot. Boil for 5 more minutes. You can tell the jam is done by stirring it and watching what happens. You want the jam to look thick and not to rush in to fill the space left by a spatula when you drag it across the bottom of the pan.

Almost ready! Crazy how much it has transformed!

5) Turn the heat off of the jam. One at the time, remove a jar from the canning pot. I like to use tongs for this. Place the jar on a folded up towel or in a shallow dish that has been filled with hot water. Do NOT put it on your countertop without anything underneath it…it will crack! Use a funnel and a ladle to fill the jar. You want to fill it to within 1/4 inch of the top of the jar. Clean off the rim of the jar, add the lid and ring, and tighten the ring just a bit (We call this “fingertip tight”… it means you just use your fingertips to tighten the ring, not the strength of your whole hand. We don’t want the rings to be too tight because air needs to escape from the jar during and after processing.)

6) Repeat with all of your jars, then put them back in the canning pot using your jar lifter (mine came in the cheap set I mentioned at the beginning of this post).  Bring the water in the canning pot back up to a boil. Make sure that you have at least 1 inch of water above your jars. Since I use small canning pots, I always check this with a ruler. Boil for 10 minutes.

7) Take the jars out with your jar lifter and place them on a clean kitchen towel on your counter. A couple hours later, check the lids to make sure they have sealed. If you press down on the top of the lid, you should not hear the button pop back up. Another way to check the seals is to take the rings off the jar, and gently lift the jar a few inches just by holding on to the edges of the lid. It should hold. Make sure to label your jars with the contents and the month so you don’t have any mysteries later!

This one was not full, so I couldn’t process it. Oh well, it went right into the fridge for me to eat!

It might sound complicated, but canning is really pretty easy! There are tons of resources online and you really don’t need to buy much stuff at all to get started. However, if you just want to make jam without worrying about the canning process, go for it!! Chop up your fruit, start with step #3 above, and just put your jam into clean glass or plastic jars or any container you like. Then keep them in the fridge or freezer and enjoy! This cherry-plum jam was definitely one of my favorite jams that I’ve made. I highly recommend it!