We be Jammin'

Hello all! This is my much anticipated, long awaited first blog on canning! For those of you who know me personally have probably seen or eaten some of the jam or salsa, or pickles I have canned over the years. If you lived by me, you probably participated in some of these adventures. I thought it was a pretty sweet deal, call your friends and convince them to contribute free labor towards a delicious goal and in the end you hand off the fruits of your mutual labors... that is unless you make 250 jars of pickles and then there aren't enough hands to hand them out to. We had pickles in the basement for YEARS. But the good news is that they were canned which meant 3 years after they were made they were still good! It was especially great because while the jars were processing in the water bath we'd all play board games, or break out the PS2 and Sing Star and karaoke our way through the evening while processing the jars.
Since moving to Maryland we've laid off the pickles and salsa because folks here aren't as interested in learning how to can and also because I can't con enough people into helping so that its not a giant chore, but we've picked up on our jam production because with minimal effort and cost (so long as you can get the fruit and jars cheap or free) you get a whole lot of product! Don't get me wrong, I don't sell this stuff I'd rather give it away. So when someone helps us out or I just like you, I give you a jar of jam to say Thanks, Midwestern style. Each year I also try to do a new flavor or a new canned item. Over the years we've canned: 4 types of salsa,  peaches, rum-soaked spiced peaches, 3 types of pickles, marinara sauce, whole tomatoes, apple sauce, and peach, strawberry, black raspberry, blackberry, cherry, red raspberry, strawberry-rhubarb, blueberry, wine-berry jams and grape jelly.
We will probably can some pickles later on so I can document it on the blog (its fun!), and do apple sauce and hopefully something with peaches. I prefer to pick my own fruit if I'm going to can, but if you can't do that we made some really great blueberry jam this year from the kind we bought at the store. So far we've been lucky and found some wild blackberry patches (THANK YOU STEVE!) and wineberry patches by where we keep the horses.  We have also found some lovely orchards where we can pick fresh fruits for similar prices to what you pay in the store.  Here is a picture to show you most of the flavors we've made so far in jams.

The recipes I use come on the insert that is inside of the certo box. The recipes and boxes look like this:

Both types of pectin have worked really well for us. The smaller box is a powder, but was really easy to use. Most powders require you to dissolve them in water first which is just a pain, so I usually just go for the liquid pectin. But what you can see is the insert to the right of the boxes which give the ingredients and instructions for the Jam. This recipe is specifically for blackberry jam. Each type of fruit requires different amounts of sugar and sometimes lemon juice to change the pH to make it last longer after the canning process.


Now Canning does not require a lot of fancy kitchen items, no matter how much I love new technology, I found out the hard way that if you use it, you may ruin the jam. So here's the list:
A large pot with a grate at the bottom so that your jars don't crack when they are boiled. The image below shows our big pot for processing with my roasting pan rack in the bottom. Matt thought it was "extra" and cut it to fit the pot. Boy was I steamed when I went to make a roast the next time, and boy was he sheepish when he told me what he did with my rack. This was a serious source of contention until a new pan and rack magically appeared.

 You also need a second large pot (the one on the right) that can hold LOTS of fruit and sugar. One that holds up to 30 cups of liquid is good

These are extra, but I highly recommend them. A canning funnel and a set of jar tongs. You can also buy a basket that you fill with the jars and submerge into the boiling water which would make the tongs a moot point.

And of course you need some jars and in this case, some pectin too as I mentioned above

This is the recipe for full sugar Blackberry jam. We made a double batch, so a couple pictures will look a bit bigger than yours if you only do a single batch.

Ingredients for a single batch of regular blackberry jam:
4 cups of Blackberries
7 cups of sugar
2 tsp butter (optional)
1 pouch of Certo liquid pectin

Boil water and pour over lids. Allow lids to sit in the hot water until you're ready to ladle

Caps in the hot water with the rings beside.

 Fill the largest pot with water and bring it to a boil. This will be used to process the jars. While waiting for it to boil, you can do the rest of the steps below.

Measure out 4 cups of berries (these were frozen after we picked them and so we just tossed them in frozen and while the pan was heating they began to thaw as we were mushing them)

Add berries to the big pot and smush up with a potato masher over medium high heat (FIRST NOTE: DO NOT USE A FOOD PROCESSOR FOR THIS! If you do, the jam won't set. I learned this the hard way after making 50 jars of syrup- aka jam that never set).

Add the sugar and keep smushing and stirring be sure not to let the sugar burn on the bottom of the pan. Continual stirring and mashing will keep this from happening.

Add 2 tsp of butter (if you want) to the mix and bring the mixture to a full rolling boil. The butter will help reduce the amount of foam you get when it boils

Add the pectin to the mixture and allow to boil for only 1 minute more

This picture is from the double batch so you see 2 streams of pectin

As soon as the 1 minute is up, turn off the heat and skim off the foam with a metal ladle (metal just works better, not sure why). Then start ladling and filling the jars with jam...quick!

Mmmmm! Foam! This makes a great ice cream topping if you have some!

And the ladling begins!

As you're ladling, put the lids on the jars and tighten the rings as tight as you can.

Almost done!

The last step is processing the jars. Put jars with the lids firmly screwed on into the boiling water using the jar tongs and allow to boil covered for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, remove the jars and set aside to cool. You may hear some popping noises. This delightful noise is the button getting sucked into the jar so you know its sealed. If the next day you can press on the lid and press the button down and it pops back up, you probably need to re-process the jar.

Finally the fruits of 1 nights labor (~3 hours of work)

This is a lot easier than you think! You can do this! Hee hee, you can can too!  Its fun to make and even more fun to give away.
Happy eating!