How many flavors would emerge in you mind when it comes to jams? Besides traditional jams like grape, blueberry and strawberry, there are many other jams. Each kind of jam brings you a new vision of gourmet and an unspeakable feeling of surprise!
Or, you may murmur that why we have to take the time to make jams since we can buy them easily from supermarket. Actually handmade jams are not only provided with a green sense of preserving fresh fruits to avoid of waste, but also have advantages of containing no pigment or artificial additive. Handmade jams are healthy and natural rich in fruits content, I would compare jams with the fresh orchard in glass jar, and you can taste the sturdy textures of fruits themselves and full-bodied natural fruity, which can’t be achieved by jams in supermarket.
So, how handmade jams taste on earth? It might be like the saying from fox to the little prince, “It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” Same with jams, the painstaking effort you devote to the jams will make your jams extraordinarily sweet and endlessly savory. When your families or friends are enjoying your heart jams, you will be like a cheering farmer who is staring at his cereals, and will experience a lingering move and a sense of achievement by knowing that everything deserves the pain.
Raspberry and red currant mixed jam
Ingredients:
Raspberries: 300g
Red currants: 300g
Raw sugar: 600g
Lemon: 1
1. Remove the root of red currants, rinse and drain the two kind of fruits
2. Add fruits into the pot, stir in a half of the raw sugar, boil juice with low-medium fire
3. Squeeze lemon juice to the mixture and whisk in the remaining sugar until melted
4. Increase the fire and bring to a boil, keep boiling for 15-20 minutes, frequently stirring in avoid of burning
5. To sterilize the jam bottles. Prepare a deep pan, put jam bottles and caps in, immerse them and a clip with water, bring to a boil and keep boiling with slow fire for at least 15 minutes, and put a plate into the fridge for testing the thickness of jams
6. After the liquid reduces to 1/3, spoon a little bit jam and drop them on the plate, wait for a half minute and use your finger to push the jam on plate, if the surface forms a thin film and is a little crumpled, your finger doesn’t stick with liquid juice, that means the jam has reached the condensation point. If not, test after boiling for another while until it reaches the condensation point
7. Remove the fire and scrape off the bubbles on the surface
8. Clip out the bottles and drain
9. Pour the jams into the bottles when hot, leave a 1cm space
10. Clean the bottlenecks with wet napkin, make sure your hands are removed from the bottlenecks
11. Clip out bottle caps and drain and screw up
12. After all jams are packed, put them into the deep pan again, immerse the bottlenecks with water, bring to a boil and keep boiling for at least 15 minutes
13. Take the jams out from water, let cool under room temperature. Screw up again
14. Handmade jams can preserve for a year under cool place, a month in fridge after opening