Jam-Making 2008: Getting started

The first thing to do is prepare the fruit. If you are doing berries, all you really have to do is wash them and then cut off the stems (if any) and maybe slice them a bit. With peaches, you have to take the skin off and pit them. So what you do is, you boil some water and put some of your peaches in a few at a time. Boil them for about 45-60 seconds and then take them out and put them in a big bowl of ice water. (This is called "blanching.") After a minute or so, you take them out of the ice water and the skins are easy to slip off. Once the skins are removed, you just cut them up, taking out the pit.

Now. I won't lie to you. This is a very messy business. My peaches were very ripe and got a bit, uh… pulpy. It made it kind of time-consuming to get all the pits out. However, since peach jam is like manna from heaven, it is well worth the effort. And I now have a new appreciation for my Gran, who puts up like 60 jars of peach jam every summer but only lets me have one little half-pint jar when I come to visit.

Once you get the fruit prepared, get out your potato masher and mush it all up. When it's nicely mushed, you can go ahead and dump in the sugar and lemon juice. Mix it all up and it's ready to go.