Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#11
|
|||
|
|||
beware parsnips
"Rusty Hinge 2" wrote in message k... | You *CAN* use citric acid, but IME it tastes of lemon. | | rant | | And it's added to most commercial jams, and ruins their flavour. | | /rant Just think how sickly they would be without it! There are natural acids in fruit, and the citric acid is added to set the sugar without too much effort. Um. It's not a matter of 'setting the sugar'! It's said that it extracts the pectin from the fruit but a lot of fruit has so little pectin that ... well never mind. I make ALL our jams and marmalades and have done so decades. I've never, ever, used citric acid in powder or fruit form, nor bottled or pectin extracted by me from apples. It's not necessary. Jam doesn't HAVE to be like a jelly, it just needs to hold itself together well enough to be able to use a knife to extract it from the jar rather than the spoon. My test used to be to invert the jar of cold jam for a few seconds, if it didn't fall or ooze out it was fine. Some jams (and marmalades) are so hard that when you mine a lump from the jar and try to spread it on a slice, the progress of the jam heaps-up a pile of butter before it. You shouldn't buy it then, make your own. It's easy and far, far better. I used to make a marmalade with honey, to sell. It was very popular but for various reasons I stopped selling it. I have boxes full of lovely mature marmalade which will probably see us out. (Un)fortunately the sugar in it has crystallised into large, tasty lumps which we love. An 8oz jar lasts us for many weeks, thus giving time for the crystallisation to continue to the bottom of the jar. Licious. Frank Cooper's Oxford Marmalade is a case in point. I unforget it how it was when I was a young brat: proper marmalade, which could sneak off the side of your toast if you were unwary. In order to make the modern block of stuff usable, I have to heat it almost to boiling-point and add half of its original volume of fluid. I nominate a cheap malt whisky (such as Lidl's Glen Orchy), along with some (half a cup) thinly-sliced crystallised ginger, pre-soaked in aforsaid malt. OK, fair's fair, I buy it now simply because I can add so much whisky innit. You could make your own marmalade with whisky but I'd prefer to use something better than paint stripper. But there again I use 30yo Armagnac when I flambé a steak ... Mary p.s. so good to see that you use butter instead of something produced by men in white coats. Why not enhance it with your own produce? |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
parsnips skeletonized | Edible Gardening | |||
Parsnips | United Kingdom | |||
Bitter Parsnips | United Kingdom | |||
pixie lilies and parsnips | United Kingdom | |||
pixie lilies and parsnips | United Kingdom |