Seasonal harvesting of berries and fruits in our country is the subject of competition and pride of housewives. Even working women manage to carve out several summer days in order to cook a certain amount of jars of their favorite jam for the winter. A simple, seemingly, affair, but one cannot do without knowing the secrets of processing various fruits. We will teach you the right way to prepare a delicious delicacy of the most capricious and difficult to prepare berries and fruits, tell you how to cook jam, how long, how to correctly observe the proportions of the ingredients, and also what fruits are best combined in assorted dishes.
Cookware for jam
For cooking traditional jam, a copper basin with a long wooden handle is most suitable. The diameter of the pelvis is 30-40 cm, the height of the side is about 10 cm. Before use, it must be thoroughly cleaned of green plaque. It is easy to do with baking soda or any cleaning powder.
How to cook jam for lack of a copper basin? You can use enameled or aluminum, but in the first jam risks to burn, and the second is not recommended because of a possible oxidative reaction. Modern dishes with a double bottom and a Teflon coating will come to the rescue, however, it is rarely on sale and is very expensive.
Remove the foam with a wooden spatula, dipping it in syrup. She easily sticks to her. They clean the foam by running a spatula on the edge of the tea saucer. Jam foam is a favorite treat for kids. You can drink it with tea or add to compote. When cooking, the foam must be removed, or the product will not stand idle for a long time and will ferment.
For one intake, no more than four kilograms of all ingredients (sugar and fruits or sugar, water and fruits) is taken. If you take more, it will be difficult to boil everything equally high quality and evenly.
You can’t stir the jam with a spoon, it can damage the shell of the fruit, and they will lose their presentation. This procedure is performed by gently and lightly shaking the entire pelvis. In this case, it is necessary to make slightly twisting movements so that the fruits move from the edges to the middle.
Jars for jam take glass. Rinse them well with soap, sterilize over steam, warm in the oven or microwave. Boil and dry the screw caps without rust. Before closing, jam covered with a circle cut out of parchment paper.
Dry jam
Do you want to get a delicious and original plum jam in your pantry? Then you need to get the right sort of drain. Wild plum, or cherry plum, is not suitable, as are other varieties that do not separate seeds. We’ll show you how to cook pitted plum jam in a way called dry.
Fruits should be cut into halves, remove the seeds, with a wooden toothpick make punctures in the peel. The next step is to make sugar syrup. To do this, pour a kilogram of sugar into a regular pan and pour a glass of water. Stir, put on fire and bring to dissolution.
When it boils, you need to pour plums into the pan, shake and discard in a colander. Syrup to another pan. Sprinkle plums on a baking sheet and put in an open oven on a small fire to dry. Sprinkle the wilted halves with powdered sugar mixed with corn starch and put in jars. The resulting dry jam can be used for baking cakes and pastries, as well as for decorating other desserts.
Plum jam
If you have a desire to learn how to cook pitted plum jam , so that it resembles jam, then we will tell about this.
If you have one kilogram of plums (the weight is taken after removing the seeds) and the same amount of sugar, you can cook fine jam in a way that is considered classic, but slightly different from the usual. It is suitable for harvesting other similar fruits, such as apricots.
From a half of sugar and a glass of water, prepare syrup (what to cook jam, we described above). Divide the plums in half, pierce with a sharp stick and remove the seeds. Fold the fruits in a saucepan, pour in the syrup, let it boil for several minutes, but not more than five, and set aside for 6-8 hours. After the specified time, strain the jam. Leave the berries in a bowl and boil the syrup in a separate bowl. Pour the plums with hot liquid, pour in the remaining sugar and add jam.
Thanks to all these manipulations, the plums will remain intact, and the syrup will thicken during storage, but will be transparent.
Apricot jam
Our apricot jam can be called a treat with a surprise. For it to succeed, you will have to be very careful. It will take 1 kg of apricots and two cups of black currant.
Currants should be trimmed with scissors. You have to act carefully so as not to damage the berries. Rinse currants and apricots and dry on a towel. On the apricots, make incisions and take out the seeds, and put a pair of currants in their place.
What to cook apricot jam, there is no need to repeat: copper dishes are best , enameled at worst. First, syrup is made separately. To do this, pour one liter of water into the pan, add a kilogram of sugar and dissolve when boiling over low heat.
Apricots stuffed with currants are put in a basin, filled with syrup and brought to a boil. It is immediately removed from the heat and removed for the night so that the fruits are soaked in syrup. The next day they boil again, carefully removing the foam. So repeat 3 or 4 times. Boil for 10-15 minutes, no longer.
Ready, almost completely drawn into the syrup apricots are put in prepared jars.
Peach jam
For jam, it is best to take a little immature, that is, hard peaches. Before cooking, they should be peeled. To do this, make cross-shaped incisions on each fruit. Put the water on the fire, when the water is bubbling, dip the fruit into it for a few seconds. In places of incisions, the skin will turn away and it can be easily removed. Overexposure is not necessary, otherwise they will soften. Now cut the flesh from the seeds and put in a basin for jam. Enameled utensils or a copper basin - this is what best to cook peach jam.
Peaches are covered with sugar for 10 hours, that is, at night. During this time they will give juice. The ratio of ingredients: 1 kg of peach pulp - 1 kg of sugar.
Cooking peaches is best in several stages - bring to a boil, remove the foam and turn it off. The next day, repeat the procedure. And so 3-4 times. Jam is considered ready when its drop does not spread, but retains a convex round shape.
Mulberry jam
Mulberry or mulberry berries are very sweet, juicy and fragrant. Of these, it is difficult to cook traditional jam. We will teach you how to make it sugar free. You’ll get jam and pie filling, and a concentrated drink. The main secret is what to cook mulberry jam. In our case, you will need a 3-liter glass jar and a 10-liter bucket. In the process of cooking, the berries settle and very much decrease in volume - almost ten kilograms of berries will take to get a full 3-liter jar.
The bucket must be filled halfway with water, put a cloth on the bottom, and a three-liter jar full of mulberry on it. Berries must be clean. For this purpose, when collecting, a large sheet of plastic film is laid under the tree, on which it crumbles. A bucket of water and a can of mulberry is put on fire and periodically, as it settles, pour new berries. When the settling process stops, the jar is covered with a lid and boiled for another hour. Then roll up, turn upside down and leave to cool. Store such a blank in the basement. An open jar will quickly deteriorate, so it is placed in the refrigerator.
Raspberries are harvested in the same way. Vitamins and nutrients are stored perfectly.
Currant jam
Jam from currant alone always turns sour and somewhat sharp, so we will tell you how and in what way to cook jam from currant so that it tastes good and retains as many vitamins as possible.
We suggest you take two types of this wonderful berry - red and black - plus apples, walnuts, sugar and honey.
A kilogram of red and black berries, taken in equal proportions, free from green twigs, rinse with water and let dry slightly. Pour a quarter liter of water into the pan and boil the berries in it. Currant is a record holder for vitamin C. It easily passes into an aqueous solution, but quickly reacts with metal surfaces and collapses, so an enameled pan or basin is the best way to cook currant jam. When the berries are softened, they must be wiped through a sieve with a plastic net.
Pour a half kilogram of honey and a pound of sugar into a large basin, dissolve over low heat, and even better - in a water bath. In the resulting syrup, dip the currant puree, 2 cups of peeled walnuts and a pound of apples. Apples should be preliminarily prepared - free from cores and cut into small slices.
Boil the aromatic mixture for about an hour, periodically shaking and removing foam.
Blueberry jam
Blueberries are a very tasty, juicy and tender berry. For jam, as a rule, take forest. It needs to be cleaned of litter. This is done very simply: pour the berries into a basin and fill with cold water. All leaves, twigs and insects will pop up, and the berries will fall to the bottom. Dried blueberries are covered with sugar in a ratio of 1: 1 and left to let the juice.
The next day, boil, like any other jam, that is, bring to a boil, remove the foam and set aside for night to stabilize. If you don’t have special dishes and you don’t know what to cook with blueberry jam, then take an ordinary pan with a thick bottom. Stir the berries with a simple wooden spoon or spatula. Foam sticks to the tree best, and it, as we already wrote above, is a source of bacteria that cause souring of the product. After the third or fourth cooking, put your creation in jars. You can not wait for cooling, and pour hot. Blueberry jam is so fragrant that neither vanillin nor lemon is placed in it.
In the same way raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries and other wild berries are boiled. If you like homemade blanks, then get some special dishes. Modern industry offers good tanks made of stainless steel and alloys with a double bottom and non-stick coating. Their price is quite high, but when you buy such dishes, you will once and for all decide the question of what to make jam from raspberries, apples, blackberries and other summer gifts.
Strawberry jam
We will cook a five-minute, which requires a short cooking time, but needs to create conditions for long cooling. In addition, with this method, the jam does not stick, and in the case of strawberries, this is important, since it tends to quickly soak and turn into porridge with inept stirring.
For jam, you need to select berries of medium size and the same size. They should be without peduncles and sepals, as well as without the slightest sign of damage. An important question: what to cook? Strawberry jam often turns ugly brown-brown. The reason for this is long cooking. If the berries are of different sizes, then this problem will remain. Therefore, we insist on the same small berries. Our delicacy should be boiled in a saucepan. Subsequently, in order to slow down the cooling and thus bring the jam to full readiness, without resorting to boiling on the stove, you will have to wrap it in a warm blanket.
Prepared berries in thin layers, interspersing with granulated sugar, pour into a pan (for 1 kg of berries - one and a half kilograms of sugar). Leave overnight to make juice stand out, and strawberries to be saturated with sugar. The next day, put the pot with strawberries on the stove, bring to a boil, remove the foam, remove from the stove and wrap it warmly. After a day, boil the jam, pour it hot into clean jars, roll up, turn upside down and wrap again. So leave to cool completely. The jam will turn out a natural color and a wonderful aroma. Berries will preserve their integrity and can be used for decorative purposes.
Cherry jam
Pitted cherry jam is stored longer than with pits, but inferior to the latter in taste. Bones contain a small amount of hydrocyanic acid, which is dangerous for humans, so jam with bones is done only for one year. Thick-bottomed dishes are the best ways to make cherry jam: they will not burn, and will cool for a long time.
Cherry jam with seeds is made in the following ratio: for 1 kg of cherry - 1.5 kg of sugar. The cherries are washed, stalks and spoiled berries are taken, covered with sugar and left to form juice. Two and a half to three hours is enough. Then put on fire and bring to a boil. Remove the foam with a wooden spatula. Allow to boil over low heat for about 15-20 minutes. To prevent jam from burning, do not forget to shake it. Cook cherry jam with seeds in 5-6 receptions. They are laid out in half-liter cans that have already cooled down.
As for how and in what to cook seedless cherry jam, there is not much difference. The only difference is that the seeds are removed from the berries using a special device. Such berries give juice much faster, and therefore they are not boiled in 5-6 receptions, but in 3-4.
Apple jam
Apple jam turns out to be especially tasty when berries of chokeberry are added to it.
The apple for him needs to be washed and peeled. Halve, remove seeds and hard partitions. Next, you need to cut the apple into slices no more than 1 cm thick. Sort the chokeberry and separate from the branches.
Take a non-stick pan, this is the best way to cook apple jam, pour 1 kg of sugar into it and pour 250 ml of water. Cook the syrup, dip the mountain ash into it - 500 grams and the same amount of apple slices. Boil. Boil for 20 minutes, constantly shaking and removing foam. Remove from stove, cover and set aside for stabilization for two and a half hours. Repeat cooking twice and pour into small banks.
Pear jam
For pear jam, only strong sweet pears are taken. In what to cook pear jam, it does not matter much. The choice is yours. You can use both the old grandmother’s copper basin and a modern pan with a double bottom and non-stick coating. In the absence of such utensils, ordinary, aluminum or enameled ones will do. Pears need to be washed, cut into halves, cut the stalks, remove the core and chop into slices or cubes.
Cook syrup from 1 kg of sugar and 1 cup of water, immerse pears in it and cook for two and a half hours, constantly removing foam. During this time, the syrup thickens, but this will become apparent only after the jam has cooled. Hot, it remains liquid. 10 minutes before the end of cooking, put vanillin or lemon zest in it. Pour into banks when it cools down a little.