shannie wrote:

"Sarah Dale" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 03:58:34 +0100, Brian Mitchell wrote:

a jam-making machine? (I hope this isn't too OT)
Where ingredients go in one end and jam comes out the other?
Last year I tried making blackberry jam (preserve?), following all
recipes and instructions **to the letter**.
I still have four impenetrable jars of blackberry toffee and four jars
of a preserve so fluid you have to hold the bread precisely level in all
directions.

Hi Brian,

I have made jam for the first time this year. Haven't really checked it
yet, but it seems OK, over solid if anything I suspect - but better than
runny!

(Just a mad idea - mix your toffee and runny jam together and get
something in the middle????)

Jam is roughly equal amounts of fruit and sugar PLUS a dose of pectin to
get it to set.

My method was to gently heat the fruit, sugar and pectin together until
all the sugar had disolved and melted, and you have a consistent glop in
the pan (you can pre-crush or crush as you go on the fruit, depending what
sort of finish you want. You then bring it up to a rolling boil (its
there when you can't stir the bubbles back in), and then let it rolling
boil for 4 mins. Then straight into hot jam jars.

You can either buy jam making sugar, which has the pectin built in, or
However, if you can find a supermarket doing it (a large ASDA did the
trick for me), you can buy boxes of pectin powder (a Silver Spoon
product) and normal sugar, which works out much cheaper. The boxes
contain 3 sachets - each sachet does 1kg of sugar. I paid £1.29 for a
box, whereas the jam making sugar was about £1.29/kg.

I made my jam in small batches in my largest steel saucepan - did make it
easier to cope with than making a large single batch.

HTH, Sarah

Another tip for jam making, if you can't be bothered with all the fiddling
with wax paper, cellophane and annoying little elastic bands that fly
accross the kitchen, get some suet from your local butcher, melt it down,
pour off the oil that results from that on top of your cooled jam, it sets
hard as its a form of tasteless and odourless lard and it keeps all air out
as it settles all round the top of the jam. A bit time consuming and you
need lots of suet but my jams keep for over a year and not a bit of mould
forms

Shan

What on earth is all that about? Traditional mebbe, but time consuming
also! All you need is a wax disc at the most.. Then you just screw the
lids,.. Our jam has a shelf life of 2 years minumum. Mind you we
ususally only use the discs with chutneys.. Jams just get a lid.
We reuse honey or jam jars.. Both work well, the ones with the
'security button' reseal to form a visual check if the vacuum has
worked.. As someone else mentions, you do need to allow your jam to
cool a bit before capping and it is worth letting it cool 'SLOWLY' We
stand ours on a board under a tea towel to cool before storing in a cool
dark place.

For chutneys we tend to use wax discs and plastic lidded jars.. Old
peanut butter jars are ideal.. The plastic lids will not corrode with
the vinegar in the chutneys as metallic ones will..
//
Jim