Brought delicious fresh fruit from the Okanagan on a recent trip to Penticton. With other trips, we didn’t have time to do anything with the fruit before it would’ve gone bad. We bought 20lbs each of apricot and plums; however we both shared some and ate a few ourselves, so the jam was less than that. S pitted all of the fruits and we froze them until we were able to come back and jam out.
Invited Dad over so he could teach and guide me in his jam making ways. Jam making is one of the memories I have through many summers from childhood to, most recently, our wedding last year. As a family, we made strawberry jam giveaways for the wedding guests. Other years, Dad and I would go blackberry picking in the thorny bushes wherever we could find and use those. This year we bought fresh from the Okanagan. Admittedly we were pretty busy actually making the jam that I didn’t take many photos and no notes. There’s also no recipe, since Dad insists he goes by the feel of jam making. How very un-Swiss of him to not have strict measurements. LOL.
Quick overview of steps
- Defrost fruits that were pitted before freezing
- Stir and melt the sugar in the fruit and its juice
- Add lemon juice and pectin and bring to a rolling boil
- Stir often, especially as the bottom could burn. This may have happened with the apricot batches. *Ahem*
- Using an immersion blender, blend all the fruit to puree (especially since we left the skins on)
- Sanitized the glass canning jars
- Meanwhile the lids boiled in water to soften the seal
- Using a ladle and funnel, fill the glass jars with a little bit space left on top
- Make sure to wipe and spills on the edge
- Add the lid and twist the metal band on tightly to seal
- As the jam cools, the pressure condensers and will create the seal to keep the jam fresh
- Voila! We made about 70 small (125ml) jars of jam to both enjoy and share.
