I’m not a canning person, but I hate to waste food. So from time to time, if I’m in possession of a large amount of fruit I know we can never consume before they go bad, I will try to preserve them.
Typically, every year in October, our apple tree will produce abundant Golden Delicious, which I will turn into applesauce. Our prolific lemon tree needs to be picked every year. After gifting lemons to friends and colleges, we still have many left, some will be made into preserved lemons; some will be zested and juiced. So we have small jars of frozen lemon zest and lemon juice ice cubes available during winter. In June our favorite grocery store Berkeley Bowl will have organic mangos at 5 or 6 dollar a case, I will buy 2 or 3 cases and cut them into cubes to freeze, which will be ready to use for smoothies or ice cream. Every summer when we return from Yosemite, we will buy cases of fresh strawberries from this particular fruit stand that sells only strawberries. We will eat plenty on the way home, and the rest will be cooked into strawberry jam and will last us for an entire year. This summer, in one of my weekly CSA boxes I got more than 4 pounds of plums. Instead of eating plums non-stop for a week, I made for the first time plum jam.
The jam was actually done in June, but this post has been pushed too many times. The main reasons are the kids were out of the school during summer, and in July we were busy celebrating American, French and Belgian national days one after another. So here we are, finally on vacation in France. Still jet lagged, woke up in the early morning, I decided to put this much delayed post up before plums are out of season.
Since the photos of jam-making were taken 2 months ago, and I have improved my photograph a great deal during these two months, I’m a little embarrassed by the photos. But the jam is absolutely delicious, so bear with me. I also designed some watercolor plum jam labels to go with it.
I remembered the first year when I started canning, I made a lot of jars: different jams, peaches in syrup, pickled carrots…you name it. The recipe in the Blue book often calls large amount of fruit or veggies. And sometimes it took me a long and sweaty day to finish one canning project. Then I found the canning blog of Marisa McClellan: Food in jars. She is specialized in small batch canning, and she is very talented to pair spices with different kinds of fruit. We can get many new ideas from her! If you want to do small patch canning, make sure to check it out.
Do you make homemade jam sometimes? What are your favorites? I would love to know. Leave a line in the comment area.
Plum Jam
- Prep Time: 30m
- Cook Time: 50m
- Total Time: 1h 20m
- Serves: 56
- Yield: 7 jars
- Category: Jams
Ingredients
- 4 1/2 pounds plums (any kind)
- 4 1/2 cups sugar (adjustable according to sweetness of the fruit)
- 2 tablespoons pectin (optional)
Instructions
- Cut plums in half and remove the pit, cut plum into small slices. (alternatively, if the pit is attached to one halve, make 4 slits until the knife meets the pit. Leave the pit attached, after the jam finish cooking, fish out all the pits.)
- Put cutted plums in an 8-quart wide stockpot, add the sugar and stir to combine. Cook at the medium heat until sugar is dissolved into the juice of plums. Add pectin and mix well. Pectin helps jam to thicken faster, you can omit pectin and cook jam a little bit longer to achieve a thick texture.
- Adjust heat to medium-high to maintain a steady boil, stir from time to time using a heat resistant spatula to avoid sticking at the bottom of the pot. Cook for about 40 minutes, until the syrup is thick and the plums soften. You will know the jam is done when the droplets from the spatula is slow dripping.
- While the jam is cooking, prepare a boiling water bath canner. Depends on your preference for the thickness of the jam, you will need 6-8 half-pint jars.
- Laddle finished jam into mason jars, leave 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe clean the rims and apply clean lids and rings, tighten the rings to fingertip tight. Lower filled jars into boiling water bath canner carefully, the water must be at least 1 inch taller than the tops of the jars.
- Bring water back to boil, cover the canner and start timing for 10 minutes. At the end of 10 minutes, turn off the heat and uncover the canner. Leave the jars in the water for another 5 minutes. This helps avoid syphoning (the jam oozes out of the jar due to temperature shock).
- Lift the jars out of the water and let them sit on kitchen towel covered counter to cool overnight. Next day remove the rings and do the lift test: hold the lid with your fingertips to lift the jar slightly, if it holds the jar is well sealed. Clean outside of the jars and store in a cool and dark place (68Fº-72Fº). Consume the jam within a year.
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