Like many people who do home canning, I generally associate making jam with the summer months when the fruit is ripe. It seems a little unfair really that the time when the fruit is best is when the weather is hot and you do not want to spend the day stirring boiling pots indoors. Such is the way of the seasons. We bottle the summer in jars of jam to bring us warm smiles in the winter.
Right now we are experiencing a downright balmy end of winter here in Jersey City. Last week it hit over 70 degrees! I spent yesterday in the back yard cleaning up the debris of the last season and readying the vegetables beds for planting. The bulbs in the flower beds have begun to grow and the perennials are already budding. I sowed the early seeds into the small cells of an indoor sprouting system. Spring is definitely coming, but I still long for that yummy warm summer taste of jam. And, somehow, between gifts, and toast, and flavoring spoonfuls stirred into greek yogurt, my summer jam has gone.
So today I set out to make a batch of triple-berry winter jam. How? you might ask would a woman who lives in Jersey City find berries to make jam in early March? The answer: in the freezer aisle! Whenever I find myself low on jam in the off season, I pick up a large bag of organic frozen mixed berries, some organic sugar, and some pectin, and I head on home to make up some jam. It’s easy, it’s tasty, it smells heavenly cooking up in your kitchen, and because the frozen fruit is already washed and denuded of it’s stems and leaves, it takes less than an hour.
Here we go:
Before you make your jam, gather your jars and lids and make sure they are sanitized. You can put them in the sink and cover them with boiling water or you can just run them through the dishwasher and that’ll get hot enough to kill anything that would cause trouble.
This recipe makes 84 ounces of jam. So you’ll need 10 half-pint or 5 pint jars. You’ll end up with a little extra, but you can just put that in a bowl. I’d be surprised if it lasts the day. This is the kind of jam you find yourself eating by the spoonful.
TRIPLE-BERRY JAM
- 48 ounces frozen mixed berries
- 8 c. sugar
- 9 tbsp. pectin (a box and a half)
- juice from one lemon
Put the berries and the lemon juice in a large heavy-bottomed pot and cook over medium heat for about five minutes. You want the berries to thaw and begin to release their juices. Add in the pectin and stir until the mixture becomes more liquid and all but the largest of the berries have defrosted. Add in the sugar and stir to combine. Boil until the sugar is dissolved. Smash any whole berries along the side of the pot with a spoon, or take them out with a slotted spoon, put them into a heat-proof measuring cup and mash them with a potato masher. Add the berries back in and boil the mixture for another 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, and turning down heat if the mixture starts to rise toward the top of the pot. Divide the jam between your sterilized jars and process to store.
YUM!
The jam will be just fine in your fridge if you plan to eat it right away, but if you want to store it you’ll need to process the jars in a water bath to insure a tight vacuum seal. It’s pretty simple: seal the jars tightly, place them on a rack in enough boiling water to cover them about half an inch, boil them for ten minutes, turn off the heat and let them sit for five minutes, remove the jars. While this processes pretty simple, a lot of people find it daunting. Handling the hot jars is tricky. Placing a series of jars in boiling water is a bit scary the first few times around. Some people try it without the rack and the jars burst from the direct heat causing a soup of broken glass and watered down jam.
I have found a method that works perfectly every time and does not require special canning equipment. I use a pasta pot. These pots have an insert that pulls up out of the boiling water to drain pasta. The insert sits about two inches above the bottom of the pot so I don’t need a rack, I can load it on the counter and lower it into the pot which makes putting the jam into the water much easier. I can pull it out of the boiling water and let the jars rest a few minutes and cool in the insert which make them easier to handle. True, I have to process the jars in batches, but it’s definitely worth it. And in the end I get several months of this:
mmmmmm. jammy.