I've made a lot of jams lately, using frozen fruit since that's all I can get right now (It's
winter in
Canada). Blueberry jam is probably the best jam I've made so far; the ingredients are
relatively cheap (compared to other
berries) all year 'round and this isn't a common store-bought jam, so
the appreciation factor is high if you decide to give it away to friends, family, your Mom, etc.
The following recipe is from my own
head and experience making jam. I encourage you to
experiment and
tweak it as you like. Then
node it.
Ingredients
2 x 600g tubs of
frozen blueberries
7 cups of
sugar
1 pkg
Bernardin fruit pectin (57g, powdered)
1/3 cup of lemon juice
Preparation
In your boiling water processing pot heat 10 250ml
mason jars to a simmer. This will prevent them from breaking due to
heat shock when filling the jars with the hot jam mixture.
How to make it
1)Put 1 tub (600g) of berries in a steel pot. Add lemon juice. Heat until mushy and then crush until mostly juice.
2) Add second tub of berries and leave whole.
3) Stirring, bring to a boil.
4) Add
Bernardin pectin, stirring briskly and maintain roiling boil for about a minute.
5) Add sugar, stirring constantly. Return to a full rolling boil that can't be stirred down. Keep at a boil for 1 full minute and remove from heat.
If the jam mixture has foamed up you will need to use a thin spoon and skim off the
foam. This sometimes happens with fruit jams, but it didn't occur for me with this recipe.
Ladle the mixture into the hot jars. Seal and process the jars in a
boiling water canner for 10 minutes following the instructions in the
Pickling node.
The results
Since half the berries were crushed and half left whole, the jam will be a nice dark blue colour that's so dark you can't see light through a 250ml jar. And the whole berries make for a nice texture and let you know that the jam is made with real fruit.
Some recipes I've seen call for a ratio of 1 cup of fruit to 1 cup of sugar. I went a little light on the sugar in this recipe (8 cups fruit to 7 cups sugar) and next time I may use even less sugar. Less sugar means more fruit taste, but enough sugar is required to preserve the jam too.