Jam-Making 2008: Canning

Once the jam is done cooking, you are ready to start filling your jars (aka: canning). Turn off the heat under your jam. Using a biggish spoon, skim off the foamy stuff from the top of your jam and just dump it into a cup or bowl.

Using your tongs, pull a jar out of your hot water pot and set the jar upright on the kitchen towel you laid out earlier. Set your funnel into the mouth of the jar. Then take your ladle and scoop up some jam and pour it into the jar until the jar is full. Do not fill the jar to the brim. Instead, you want your jam to come 1/4 inch from the top (this is called "headspace"). Then poke your little plastic knife thing down into the jar and all around the sides a few times to release any air bubbles that may be hiding down in there. Now you're ready to fill the next jar. Repeat the above process until you run out of jam and all the jars are full.

Using a damp cloth, carefully wipe the rim and threading of each jar to get any jam residue off. Next, fish a lid out of the hot water pot and place it, sticky side down, on top of the first jar. Screw a band on over the lid until it fits snugly (not too tight). Repeat this process for the rest of the jars.

Now just leave your jam alone for a few hours. You will hear little satisfying popping sounds coming from the lids as the jam cools. I let mine cool overnight before moving it around. Then you can label the lids with the contents and date.

Jam-Making 2008: Ok here we go!

Once you're all set up, fill up your big pot with water and stick all your jars in there on the rack. You want them upright and the water level in the pot needs to cover them by at least an inch or more. Try to keep the jars from touching one another or the sides of the pot. Find a burner that it will fit on (mine is so big, I can only fit it on the front of my stove). Then turn on the burner to get the water started boiling. This is going to take a long time, so you will want to wait a few minutes before starting to cook your fruit.

While the water is getting going, you'll be cooking your jam. The goal here is to get your fruit to boiling. Turn on the burner to a medium heat setting. The nice thing about Dutch ovens is, you don't need to use high heat to get things to boil in them. In fact, you want to keep your heat as low as possible while still maintaining a boil in the fruit. Once you get the fruit boiling, stir it every few minutes and make sure that the heat is not too high. If your heat is too high, the jam will scorch a little on the bottom and you will get these icky scorched floaties in your jam.

The jam needs to boil for about 25-30 minutes. You're looking for it to reduce down and get a little thicker. The peaches took a little longer to cook than the strawberries did; I think this was because the peaches have more juice in them. You'll get this foamy stuff on the top of the jam as it boils; that's normal. Just keep stirring it and checking on the heat periodically.

Meanwhile, your water will finally start boiling at some point. It needs to boil for at least 15 minutes. Then turn the heat down to a low setting. You want the water to stay hot (180 degrees). Now take the jar lids and drop them down into the hot water. Just let all that sit until your jam is finished cooking.

Jam-Making 2008: Setting up all that crap you just bought

Once your fruit is ready for action, it's time to set up all your canning gear.

Jam-making is a kind of process, so you will want to lay out your stuff accordingly. The basic process for all of this is going to be:

1. Boil the jars for 15 min. to sterilize
2. Boil the jam for about 25-30 min.
3. Pour jam into hot jars; seal with lids

You will need to put either a wire rack or some folded kitchen towels into the bottom of your giant boiling pot. Mine came with a nice wire rack, so that is what I used. Regardless of which one you use, the main thing is that you want to keep your jars at least an inch or so off the bottom of the pan and you don't want them to touch the sides of the pot. This keeps the jars at an even temperature throughout the process and it also keeps the glass from coming into contact with the metal of the pot and shattering them. (I shattered a couple of jars this way when I first attempted to can all those years ago. It turned me off of the canning process. Fortunately, I am older and wiser now!)

So anyway, wash all those jars, lids, and bands in hot, soapy water and then rinse. Set the bands and lids aside. Next, put the Dutch oven on the stove top and pour your fruit mixture into it. You will not use the lid. Go ahead and lay out some kitchen towels flat by wherever you're planning on dishing out your jam when it's ready. The towels will keep all that hot jam you're going to be accidentally dripping everywhere from getting on your nice countertops. I laid mine out right next to the stove by the Dutch oven. This made it easier to get the hot jars onto the towels and then fill them from the Dutch oven. Now put your jar bands, funnel, and plastic knife next to the towels. Everything is right there and within easy reach.

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.

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).

Jam-Making Gear

The first thing I learned about all this is that you need a lot of crap to make jam. The nice thing is, you just have to invest in it the one time - and really, it's not all that expensive. Most of this stuff will probably last forever.

Here is a basic list of the equipment:

Dutch oven (at least 3.5 qt size)
Big metal pot for boiling (mine is 16 qt)
Some large bowls for preparing & mixing fruit
Wooden spoon
Potato masher
Tongs for taking jars out of hot water
Funnel
Large ladle
Plastic (or other non-metal) knife type thing
A bunch of measuring cups
Canning jars with lids and bands
A whole mess of kitchen towels

I didn't have hardly any of this stuff around my kitchen (except for a few of the utensils), so I had to go shopping. And in case you don't know what a Dutch oven is (I didn't either), it is basically just a big cast-iron pot with an iron lid. I got one with an enamel coating for easier cleanup. I wish I'd bought a bigger size, though. The one I got is only 3.5 quarts and I worried a couple of times that my jam might boil over (luckily, it didn't). And the big metal pot is for boiling your jars in. You don't want to use one of your nice non-stick coated pots for this. All the repeated water boiling is just going to mess up your good pots. I got a cheapo one with an enamel coating and it works just fine. You want to get one that has a broad, flat bottom. Mine also came with a wire rack inside, which is very handy.

I also got this handy little canning toolkit for about $6 at the Wal-Mart. I debated whether I really needed it or not, and I am so glad I got it. All of the tools were really helpful and I would strongly recommend getting this set.

Makin' jam!!!

I loves me some jam!

I decided that this summer I would learn to make jam and possibly even do some pickling. All the tasty summer fruits are finally starting to come into season, so I decided to get started this week. Now, I did some canning one time about 15 years ago and it turned out awful. And I have never made jam before. So this week's jam-making has all been a fun learning experience.

First I made strawberry jam since that is what was fresh and available at my local store. It turned out pretty good, although I am not particularly fond of strawberry anything. I like my strawberries all by themselves most of the time. However, I have a deep and abiding love of peach jam and decided to make that next. I took my daughter to the Dallas Farmers Market downtown and we picked out some mighty fine peaches.

Time to get started!!

How to tie a tie

Today's TipNut points to a great illustrated tutorial on how to tie a tie. Instructions cover how to tie a Windsor Knot, a Half-Windsor Knot, a Four-in-Hand Knot, and even a Bow-Tie.

I was on the debate team in high school and, in the course of events, learned to tie a tie to help out all the geeky debater guys get their act together before a debate. However, that was like 15 years ago and, like most of what I learned in high school, I've totally forgotten how to do it. And as a woman, (unless you're Annie Lennox) you won't exactly have a lot of opportunities to practice the art of tying a tie. However, I believe that this is probably one of those important life skills that everyone should know. After all, you never know when you might need to help out a man in distress at a wedding or some such.