Jam-Making 2008: The recipe

I was really intimidated about canning at first. It seems like there are all these steps and everything and it looks Way Too Complicated. But really, it is pretty easy.

This is a super-basic recipe for jam (I got it from my Betty Crocker Cookbook):

4 pints (8 cups) fresh, ripe fruit
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
5 cups sugar

Yes, the fruit must be fresh. And yes, the fruit must be ripe. You don't want to use under-ripe fruit for this. It's tempting, particularly when you see just how much sugar you're dumping in there. Hell, just about anything tastes pretty good when you mix it with 5 cups of sugar. However, the jam will give you a lot more of your fruit's flavor if you use only the ripest fruit. Also, it is very difficult to mash up under-ripe fruit. It makes for hard, crisp bits in your jam and who wants to spread crunchy jam on their biscuits?

Of course, this means that you'll need to select fruit that is in season. I'm making this jam in the summertime, so I'm using summer fruits like berries and peaches. I'm looking forward to making jam out of pears in the fall. (Can you make apple jam, I wonder?)

For these posts, I've used peaches (because peach jam is the best thing EVER!!!). They are just starting to come into season here in Texas, and a lot of them are still kind of hard and tart. However, we found some good, sweet ones at the farmers market, so I bought a big box.

This recipe yields about 3 pints of jam when done with strawberries and 4 pints when done with peaches. I'm thinking that this is because peaches have more juice in them maybe… At any rate, use this as a guide for what size and how many jars you want to buy. I used half-pint jars for most of the batch (for giving away to family and friends) and then used pint jars for the rest (for hording for my greedy self).