I Can Can!

I spent this weekend doing one of my new favorite things – canning!  Last year my in-laws came into town at the end of summer and re-taught Marty and I how to can.  But this year I just couldn’t wait, the berries looked too good to pass up!  So this weekend I made peach-blueberry syrup for pancakes, waffles, and angel food cake; blueberry jam for sandwiches, cookies, and eating out of the jar; and strawberry jam for sandwiches, saltine crackers, and all kinds of other delicious jam recipes.  Here, as best as I can describe it – which I intentionally won’t do because I’m cooking at high altitude up here and the processing times are different at different elevations – are the steps to jam making.

Step 1: Prepare supplies. This includes buying enough berries/fruits/veggies/etc to can, enough sugar/pectin/spices/etc. to make them taste delicious, and enough jars/bands/lids to hold them all.  It also means cleaning the food and sanitizing the equipment.  You must sanitize the jars properly otherwise the jam will go bad and all of your hard work will be lost.  Which is sad and definitely not something I want for you!  After they’ve been sanitized, keep them warm on their sides in the oven along with the lids and bands.  Get them out just before you’re ready to add the pectin, or better yet, have someone get them out of the oven while you’re adding the pectin and boiling the jam.

Step 2: Rinse and clean berries. This is pretty self explanatory, but make sure to get all leaves, flowers, twigs, dirt, dust, and other things on your fruit off.  Like this:

Step 3: Mash up the berries. This is where your own preference for how chunky you like jam to be comes in.  Just remember, this is not jelly.  The difference between jam and jelly?  Jam is made with whole fruits, jelly is made from fruit juice.  I learned that from the pectin box, so hopefully it’s true.

Step 4: Mix the jam. Put the berries and the sugar in a large and heavy stockpot together.  It may seem hard to stir at first, but the sugar dissolves pretty quickly.

Step 5: Prepare to process. Get a LARGE pot of water boiling (unless you have a pressure canner, which I don’t).  I don’t have a canning pot, so I just use the pot that I use to brine our turkey every Thanksgiving (yeah, all two of them!).  It needs to have enough water in it so that when you put the jars in they’re completely covered with boiling water.  You also need a little rack on the bottom so that the bottom of the jars don’t touch the hot bottom of the pot.

Step 6: Cook the jam. Get the berry and sugar mixture up to a rolling boil and add the required amount of pectin (just remember, you cannot substitute liquid pectin for powdered pectin or it won’t gel right).  Then, bring it back to a rolling boil for a minute, skim the foam off the top with a metal spoon, and you’re ready to start ladling the hot jam into jars.

Step 7: Ladle the jam into hot jars. I prefer using a funnel, but if you have more balance or grace than me, go for the straight-up-lade maneuver (I think the judges give you extra points for that, actually).  As soon as you’ve filled the jar and left the appropriate amount of headspace, take a damp paper towel and wipe off the outside of the mouth of the jar.  Then put on a lid and tighten a band.  Tighten the band enough to seal it, but don’t overtighten it.

Step 8: Process the jars. Put all the jars in the boiling water for the appropriate amount of time.  You could use tongs for this, but I think it’s worth $3 to get canning tongs if you’re going to be doing a lot of canning.  Then, when you take the jars out of the water, simply put them either on a rack or a dishtowel.

Step 9: Wait and listen. I hate this part, but it does give you time to clean up the kitchen.  As the jars cool, you should hear the lids of the jars pop.  It’s the exact same noise that you hear when you open up a jar of applesauce or jam from the store.  That means that the jars have processed correctly.  If one of the jars doesn’t pop, you can just put it in the fridge and eat it over the next week or so, but you can’t store it unrefrigerated.  If you’re not sure if the jars have popped or not, then after a while press down on the lid a little.  If it moves, then either you tested too early (shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes or so) or the jar didn’t process and you have to refrigerate it.

Step 10: Store and eat! Jars of homemade jam can be stored in cool, dark places for up to a year.  Obviously, once they’ve been opened you have to refrigerate them, but other than that, once your jars are cool (usually at least 12 hours to be completely safe), you can store them.  Always make sure to check the jars before you open them.  Make sure the jam still looks good and not moldy, and when you open the jar make sure to listen for the pop.  Then eat up!

And that’s all there is to it, just ten steps from the grocery store to your own homemade jam (which tastes particularly delicious with homemade bread).  You should try it this coming weekend!