Jammed

I feel like I preface a lot of my posts with "I'm not much of an X person, but this recipe was really good." I could think of a dozen examples: apple butter, custard, red meat, cupcakes, tres leches cake - pretty much any cake really.

But seriously, I am not much of a jam person. I was reluctant to even make these recipes, because I feel like it's a waste of precious fresh fruit. Jams look good, but the glistening, globby texture doesn't appeal to me. Given a piece of toast or English muffin, I will choose butter 10 times out of 10.

But no. I am a jam person. I found out this weekend that it just has to be the right jam. And when it is the right jam, I could eat the whole jar with a spoon. Case in point...

Strawberry red currant jam

This is the first jam recipe I tried from my new preserving cookbook. They had better not all be this good, or basically I'm going to buy out all the area supermarkets this summer making jam. People will go hungry and Palatine will become a food desert, all because of this freaking jam.

It starts out easily enough; weigh the appropriate amounts of strawberries and red currants and cook in a pan with lemon juice and zest.

A word about my ingredients, as usual. I picked the strawberries TODAY. Myself. This morning. In a field. Enough said. The currants I picked up from the farmers' market. They were really tart - too tart to eat alone - but the grower suggested making jams with them. All righty.

You cook until the berries break down a bit (this smells amazing), then you mix in the sugar and pectin. Pectin is a gelling agent that comes from fibrous fruits, often apples. I am going to make some of my own pectin stock this fall, but at the moment the packets will do.

Once you add those ingredients, boil for 10 minutes or more, until the jam is set. How do you know it is set, you ask? Good question; it is probably the thing that scared me most about making jam. Here's what the book says to do: take a cold plate and drop some of the jam onto it. Wait a minute for it to cool, and then push the jam with your finger. If it wrinkles, that means it's set. Look it up, I'm serious, I'm not making this shit up.

At that point, you are ready for canning. I've posted on canning before, but the process is similar here, I just used smaller jars this time.

1. Sterilize jars in oven
2. Fill jars with jam
3. If you spilled on the jar lip (and I did), wipe to ensure a good seal
   
4. Add jar tops and screw on rings
5. Lower jars into water bath
6. Boil for 5 minutes (can be longer with some vegetable canning)

And you're done! These jars sealed right away and I labeled them with the date. There was a little jam left over, so I put it in a Tupperware container and we'll eat it from the fridge this week. (If it lasts that long.)

Sooooo, as you can guess from the photo, this stuff looks and smells pretty amazing. As far as I can tell, the currants popped during the cooking process, but many strawberries are still whole in the jam, which is what you want. I ate the glob that I tested for doneness, and I started moaning and basically doing the "When Harry Met Sally" thing right in the kitchen. Dave had to ask if I was OK (sometimes I also make moaning noise when I cut myself, for example), so I had him taste the jam, and he agreed that it is amazing. AMAZING.

I don't even know what I want to eat it with; I feel like eating it with anything is like polluting it. So freaking good. I'm going to keep one jar and give the other to a deserving soul sometime soon.

Pear, rhubarb, and ginger jam

This was my weekend's second attempt at jam, and while it didn't go as well as the first, it was still fun to make.

I peeled and chopped 2 pears, then chopped 1.5 lb. of rhubarb. Mix with 4 cups of sugar, ginger, lemon juice, and orange juice, and you've got a sandy little mixture ready to jam it up.

This one didn't contain any pectin powder, so I was a little worried about it gelling, and it did indeed take forever. In fact, it never did pass the "wrinkle test" above, but it was looking pretty solid just the same. There were a few pear and rhubarb pieces left, in the end, and I had enough for four jars and a little extra to keep in the fridge.


The book's version doesn't look so pink, but my rhubarb pieces were very pink indeed. The ginger and citrus juices gave a very bright flavor to the jam; Dave said it is almost savory. But I don't know, this one wasn't my favorite. Maybe I'll stick to berry jams in future.