Lessons in Jam Making: Part Two - Choosing Fruit

This is part two of the series on jam making.  Today we will talk about how to know if your fruit will be suitable.  This is a much shorter lesson then part one.

Fruit

This is my non-scientific explanation of how to chose your fruit, and why some don't work on their own. 

For jam to set it needs to have both acid and pectin.  Jam works best with fresh fruit, because the pectin lessens as fruit is stored.  Pectin is the thing in fruit that makes jam set, so when choosing fruit, you need to make sure that it is a type with plenty of pectin.  It also needs to have some acid.  If the type of fruit that you are using is lacking in either acid or pectin, you can add some lemon juice, because it is high in both, or you can use something like "jamsetta" (which I think is made by Fowler's Vacola) or some other jam setting additive, in which case, you should follow the instructions on the packet.

Fruit with both pectin and acid

This fruit can be used without adding any lemon juice.

Grapes
Quinces
Citrus fruit
Plums
Crab apples

Fruit that is low in pectin

Add two tablespoons* (40 ml - Australian tablespoons are 20 ml each) lemon juice to 1 kg fruit.

Pineapple
Sour peaches
Rhubarb
Apricots

Fruit that is low in acid

Add two tablespoons* (40 ml) lemon juice to 1 kg fruit.

Apples
Sweet quinces
(These fruit go brown when exposed to air)

Fruit that is low in both acid and pectin

It is generally best to make jams that have this fruit mixed with other fruit, use added jamsetta or a similar product or lots of juice.

Melons
Pears
Sweet peaches
Most berries
Cherries

You might notice that lots of our favourite jam flavours come into this category of low acid and low pectin.  That is why many of the recipes for these jams use a jam setting additive.

*In Australia, our tablespoons are 20 ml.  In the US, a tablespoon is 15 ml.  To complicate things, many kitchenware shops in Australia seem to sell US tablespoons (and perhaps don't even realise that there is a difference), and of course, Australians often cook from US recipes.  I like to give a measurement in millilitres where possible to avoid confusion. 

Lessons in Jam Making: Part One - The Basic Method

Today, we will start with a basic lesson in jam making, and later in the series I will give you some jam making recipes to get you started.  If you have never made jam before, I would suggest that you read through the information in today's post, and perhaps keep it handy for your first jam making session, but use one of the recipes to make your first batch or two.  After that you should be able to use this basic method to make jam with whatever fruit you have in abundance.

The lessons will be:
Part One - The Basic Method
Part Two - Choosing Fruit
Part Three - Processing Sealed Jars (Using a Water Bath)
Part Four - Tomato Jam
Part Five - Apple and Strawberry Jam
Part Six - Apple Jam

Basic Jam Making Method

Ingredients:

Fruit (there is more information about fruit selection following) - about 2 kg
Sugar - about 2kg
Water

Equipment:

LARGE SAUCEPAN - Currently, I have a "maslin pan" - this is a wide pan made especially for jam making.  I love it because my jam can be shallow in it and thus reduce down quickly, and because there are measurements on the inside of the pan so I don't have to measure my fruit cup-by-cup.  I have been making jam for years though, and only got this pan in the past year or so, using the large saucepan that I also use for soup previously.  Don't feel like you have to buy a special pan.



SPOON - I use a wooden spoon

JARS - For years, jam recipes said that you could reuse clean jars from supermarket purchases, sterilise the jars before using, and just seal them quickly after filling.  This is what I did.  Now, recipes say that the jars need to be processed in a water bath after filling - like when you preserve a jar of peaches or similar (called canning in the US or preserving in Australia).  So this is what I do now.  In my case, I use Ball Mason preserving jars and a Ball Mason brand preserving pot.  When I have a smaller quantity I use their little starter kit with a stock pot purchased elsewhere - for three jars or less it takes a lot less time to boil the pot of water then the full Ball Mason pot.  If you have this set up, you will probably already know how to do this.  Otherwise, I will give a few details.  I would suggest buying the Ball Blue Book of preserving for accurate information about times, etc.

PRESERVING POT AND OTHER EQUIPMENT - This is discussed above.  If you don't have all this equipment already, it should not stop you from making jam.  It is only recently that jam recipes added the recommendation to process sealed jars of jam in a water bath.  It will ensure safe food, and is what I do.  You could keep jam (even sealed jars) in the frig.  I am not going to recommend skipping the step of processing jars that will be kept out of the frig, but you will still find many recipe books that say that you don't have to do it.  I will describe the processing equipment in more detail when I explain how to do it.

OPTIONAL - JAM THERMOMETER - This is not necessary, but is very useful in telling that the jam is ready.

Knife, chopping board, measuring cup or jug

Method:

1)  Prepare the fruit - cut off bad bits, peel, core, remove seeds, chop up, etc.  Make sure you are using good fruit. 

2)  Put the fruit into your saucepan - it should only be about 5 cm (2 inches) deep so that later the liquid can evaporate better.  Don't get too fussy with this measurement - its just to give you the idea.

3)  Cover with a little water if necessary (I generally wouldn't use water or would only use a tiny bit for tomato jam and strawberry jam as they are already pretty watery).

4)  Boil the fruit until it is as soft as you like it on your toast.  Once you add sugar to cooking fruit it wont soften any more.

Meanwhile, prepare your jars.

PREPARING JARS

• Wash the jars well and rinse them in hot water.
• Now you have to sterilise the jars.  You can do this in the oven or in boiling water. 
• Before I started using Ball Mason Jars and processing after bottling, I use to sterilise jars in the oven.  To sterilise them in the oven, put them the right way up, open, on an oven tray that has several thicknesses of newspaper on it.  Don't let the jars touch each other.  Put this into a cold oven.  Turn the oven on to about 120-150 degrees Celsius and leave the jars until you need them - 30 minutes at least.  Put the lids into a small saucepan, cover with water and boil them.
• My current method is to follow the Ball recommendations.  My jars are washed and put into my preserving pot on a rack so they don't touch the bottom, and completely covered in water.  This is brought to the boil and the jars are boiled for 10 minutes.  It takes longer then you expect to bring that quantity of water to the boil, so start it early and then reheat the jars in the water when the jam is almost ready.  The Mason Jar lids (new lids for each batch) need to be put into a small pot and covered with water, and then brought to a simmer (not a rolling boil) for 10 minutes.

5)  Measure your fruit mixture in cups and add one cup of sugar for each cup of fruit.  Add this off the heat.

6)  Return the mixture to the heat and stir it until ALL the sugar has dissolved.  Test this by feeling it between your clean fingers (but don't burn your fingers).  Make sure there isn't any undissolved sugar on the side of the pot - you can brush down the sides of the pot with a wet pastry brush or scrape them with a silicone bowl scraper/spatula.  It is important that your jam doesn't boil until all the sugar is dissolved.

7)  After the sugar is dissolved, bring your mixture to the boil without stirring.  From here on, don't stir your jam.  If you are worried about it sticking, occasionally use a wooden spoon to move it gently about.

8)  Boil the jam without the lid on until it is ready when tested.

TESTING IF JAM IS DONE

• Have a clean saucer ready in the freezer.
• When you first start boiling the jam, if you get a spoonful of mixture and tip it back into the pot, it will run off the spoon like water.  Wait until jam blobs seem to come together a bit before dropping off your wooden spoon.
• Put a small amount (about a teaspoonful) of jam onto your cold saucer, and put it back into the freezer until the jam reaches about room temperature.  While you wait for it to cool, remove the rest of the jam from the heat or it may overcook. 
• When at room temperature, the jam should be a good spreading consistency.  If it is too runny, boil it more and test it again.

ALTERNATIVELY:  use a jam thermometer (this really is easiest, although I still like to use the saucer test).  The jam will be ready at 105-106 deg C (220-222 deg F).

9)  Remove the jam from heat and your jars from the oven or the boiling water.  You want the jam and the jars to both be very hot or the jars will crack.  If there is any froth on the top of the jam that would look bad, skim it off (put it into a bowl for spreading on bread later - it looks bad but tastes good). 

10)  Fill the jars right up with jam and put the lids on.  In part three of this series I will describe the processing of the jars after they are filled with jam.

Refrigerate after opening.

 

Welcome

Edited to add:  I decided a while ago to start a new blog, so that it had a more general focus - my old blog had started with mostly sewing and similar things.  Below is the introduction for that new blog.

But you will see that I have written very few posts.

So I decided to merge the two blogs.  I should delete the introduction now because it is completely out of place, but it does sort of explain the change in direction of the blog, so for now, it can stay.

---------------

Welcome to my blog. 

Right now I'm sitting at my dining room table, wondering what to write for my introduction.  I know what I'm going to write for my first "real" post - I've just finished a batch of tomato jam, and I have the photos to prove it.  But before I can write that post, I have to introduce myself.

Two out of four of my children are in the room.  They're talking.  They're wrapping presents for me (behind my back) for mother's day in two days.  They say its fine to wrap in the same room as me because I can't see them.  My husband is across the table trying to give me suggestions of what to write.  I can see his mouth moving, but can't hear a thing he is saying, because another of my children is playing the piano (beautifully) in the next room which is only a couple of metres away.  The final of my four children is off riding his bike with his mates.

On the table are the crumbs and empty plates from afternoon tea, an empty glass bowl that had tomatoes in it that have now become jam, and sixteen jars of preserved pears from earlier in the week, waiting for labelling so they can be put away.  There are also numerous books, catalogues, lists, pens, and little bits of shopping that have yet to be put away - the table was clear last Saturday, and today is Friday.  It stayed mostly clear for most of the week, but Saturday is our big tidying day, so it will be good again by the end of tomorrow.

In this blog I will write about our efforts to "live with awareness".  I told my husband that if I wrote that here I would need to define it - "awareness of what?".  He said "that's the point".  Hmmm.  We try to be aware of many things in our decision making - the environment, our health, God, community, the future, the impact on the kids, etc.  This brings us to doing things like moving backwards down the production line when buying things - that is, buying fruit to make jam instead of buying jam, making some of our clothes, making healing salves for simple things, trying to grow some food, etc.  We also look to minimise harm to others with our purchasing decisions, so we buy fair trade and/or organic when possible.  I will include recipes, methods, patterns and ideas.  I hope that you will find something useful.

Present wrapping is now happening right in front of me - I'm keeping my eyes glued to the screen as I type so that I don't see what is being wrapped.  Its time to clean up the afternoon tea, put into the oven the bread that is still rising and heat up leftover minestrone soup for dinner.

Nature Bags - Watercolour Paints

I've posted about our nature bags before.  These are bags that we can grab when we are going on a nature walk or somewhere in nature, and we might like to explore things more closely, and sometimes we draw or paint what we see.

In our nature bags we have a small drawing book, paints, a pencil, monoculars (that is, binoculars but with only one barrel, so you look with only one eye - I often find these easier for children, and they are much smaller and lighter to carry around), a loupe (for looking at things more closely), a mini compass, tiny flashlight (smaller then a pen) and a whistle (for safety).  There is also room for a small camera, ipod or phone for taking photos.  Click here to see a bit more detail about the nature bags.

Today I thought I'd put in a bit more detail about our watercolour paints, as we love them and they are just perfect for this purpose, or any other time when you want to take paints on the go.  They are easier to take with us then coloured pencils (although we do sometimes add them to our bags too).

Note about my spelling:  Being Australian, I spell colour - "colour".  I will use this spelling whenever I type the word.  But the brand name of the paints is not spelled that way, so I will write it as it is spelled.  It may look like I'm changing the spelling all the time, but that's why.

The paints we use are Peerless Watercolor paints.  I bought them from http://www.peerlesscolor.com/.  They are watercolour paint on cards.  You wet the paint (using a wet brush) and lovely colours come from them.

http://www.peerlesscolor.com/

I made a palette from watercolour paper, which I print with little squares labelled with all the colour names.  You could do this by hand, but as I had to make a few of these palettes, it was quicker and easier to print them.  The palettes are cut to size so that each palette is made of two watercolour cards that are taped together in the middle, and it will fit nicely inside the back of our sketch books (and moleskine sketchbooks).  Little rectangles of the paint cards are cut and glued (using glue tape) onto the palettes.  Finally, we add a little sample of the colour painted above each little paint rectangle.

You might be able to see that the bottom half of the palette looks a little shiny or reflective.  That's because there is a piece of plastic taped in the middle (so its like a three page book).  This stops the paints mixing and also gives a palette for mixing colours.

The instructions for this, including a youtube video, are from Jane Davenport.  

Link to Jane Davenport's site

Link to Jane Davenport's youtube clip about Peerless Watercolors

Along with these paints, we use brushes filled with water, so there is no need to take along a cup for water.  This little tin of pencils and things is what I take.  The kids have a few less and they have spots in their bags for them (I take a few spares).  

We also have a piece of paper towel or a small cloth folded in the back of the book for dabbing the brush on.  

When we go on holidays I take a bag (an old laptop bag) with extra art supplies such as a variety of papers cut to A5 or smaller, watercolour pencils, coloured pencils (Prismacolours) and I take the spare Peerless Watercolor cards, along with scissors and glue tape.  If we use up a colour on our individual palettes, as we often do with shades of green, I can cut another little rectangle and replace it.

Here are a few pictures from my nature book, to show off these lovely paints, but you would do well to look at Jane Davenport's pictures for the lovely colours that she uses.  The pictures are taken with my phone, so could be better quality.

Beach (hopefully that's obvious?) - I wanted the challenge of the different shades of blue in the ocean - still needs lots of practice

A bank covered in flowers leading from grass to beach

Lemon tree - the smudges in the writing are where I've smudged names for online posting

I will try and find some pictures from my children's nature journals to post sometime, but to be honest, they haven't done any for a little while - just looked at things and looked them up.  Hmmm ... better plan a day.

Brock Magiscope

This is not a post about sewing or about making anything at all.  We have a Brock Magiscope, which is a type of microscope that is super-sturdy, and I know that there are a few people around who are trying to decide what type of microscope to buy for their kids, so I thought I'd post a few pictures here that I've taken through the microscope.  It should give a bit of an idea of the detail that you can get.

For most of these photos I just pointed my camera (an Olympus PEN - like a DSLR) onto the top of the microscope and used auto settings.  Recently I ordered a small part that screws onto the lens that just blocks out outside light - I used that for the catydid photo, but didn't have it for the others.  Most of the time I took a few photos - some worked well, others were not as clear.

First is a little catydid that I found already dead.  I put it into a little plastic box and under the microscrope.  It was about 1 to 1.5 cm long in total.  This is the magnification that comes with the microscope - 40x.

These two are onion cells - just pulling a thin bit of the skin off the onion.  I took these photos over a year ago and of course didn't label them, but I know that I was playing with the highest magnification I could get, so I'm pretty sure that this first picture is at 400x.  The next one was obviously less, but I'm really not sure what.  Perhaps 200x.  I shone a cheap torch in underneath the microscope just to give a little more light then I had in the room which helped.  It was very hard to focus.

This shows yeast that has been left to sponge.  It was something that my daughter did at school, and I googled and googled for more info to know what I was looking at - is it just the air bubbles?  I'm not sure.  Again, at the time I was playing with different magnifications, so unhelpfully, I can't tell you what this is, except that I'm pretty sure it wasn't as high as 400.  I will start to write it down.  Really.

I'll try to take some more to add when I can.  That's all I can find now.

Artwork from yesterday completed

Just wanted to share the end result of the artwork from my children yesterday. The video from artventures.com.au taught them to do two birds, outlined in oil pastels and then painted with watercolours.  Here are their paintings.

From the seven year old:

And from the six year old:

I was hoping they'd get creative with it afterwards though, so left the materials out and gave them another piece of paper each. The six year old continued on to produce two more lovely paintings.

(And by the way, these birds all represent members of our family. The girls have bows.)

Recipe: Lettuce Wraps

I'm not going to write this out as a formal recipe, as it is more of a quick dinner idea then a recipe, and will depend on what you have available.

Cook whatever veggies you have on hand that you'd like to include - I used 3 small carrots and 2 small zucchinis, cubed, and stir fried them in a little Olive oil until starting to brown.

Now cook the tofu mixture:

INGREDIENTS

Olive oil, as needed

750 g block firm tofu (organic, GE free)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 teaspoons good salt

1 teaspoon chopped garlic

Chopped fresh dill if you like - a couple of tablespoons

METHOD

Heat up a good non-stick fry pan or wok. Add a little oil.

Drain any liquid from the tofu (and I usually rinse it then too). Crumble it directly into the heated fry pan. Cook this until some of it starts to go golden. No need to wait for all of it to, but you want to cook it until the texture is a bit chewier, so don't rush this. Let some go brown.

Add the lemon juice, salt, garlic and chopped fresh dill if you have it. Taste and add more salt and lemon if you like. Cook for a little longer, stirring to mix it all well.

Mix in the cooked veggies from earlier and heat it through.

SERVE with iceberg lettuce leaves (or your choice), trying to keep the leaves as big as possible.

Spoon the tofu mixture into lettuce leaves (like San choy bow), wrap up and eat.

We had this with a bowl of chopped salad veg - cucumber, carrot and grape tomatoes, and corn on the cob. The kids added tomato sauce of course!