That’s a lot of fruit!
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Chop, chop!
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Jammin’
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Sterilize, sterilize, sterilize
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Finished jam
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I did it! I made 12 quarts (plus) of mixed summer berry preserves and canned it. It was quite an undertaking.
First of all, that much jam requires a gob of fruit. Like, 6 packs of strawberries, 4 packs of blueberries, and 2 bags of cherries, plus one bag of frozen raspberries thrown in for good measure. Luckily I caught them on sale. I guess that’s kind of the point of canning, isn’t it, to get the fruit at its peak and at its best price?
(I only get a little bit of fruit each week with my farmshare, so yes I caved and bought non organic fruit from the evil Wal Mart empire. I’ve never done this before and didn’t feel like wasting $50 of fruit from the farmer’s market.)
When I made the cherry jam, I didn’t chop up the cherries at all after pitting them, and it was quite chunky. To eliminate that this time around, I sent everything through the food processor for a few pulses.
I cooked the jam in two batches because the canner I bought only holds 7 jars at a time. Since I had 12 jars to work with, I split the fruit in half and did 6 and 6. Apparently the key to good jam is to cook it as hot and fast as you can without burning it. This is a lot easier said than done when you are making a huge batch. I followed the recipe for cooking times even though it wasn’t cooked down as much as I thought it would be. I think that’s what the pectin is for.
I was raelly paranoid about getting everything super clean, and I’m still not sure I did it right. But so far (a week later) the jars don’t look moldy and the jam appears to have set up, so I think I’m in the clear.
Now that I’ve gotten a small taste of success, I have a whole list of other things I really want to try to can: peach halves, apple butter, maybe even tomatoes or the elusive tomato jelly? I have delusions of a Christmas gift basket with canned goods from every month of the year. Thankfully, I know myself well enough to know that that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon.
Great job Sarah!
It looks yummy!
Canning terrifies me. That said, my MIL cans peaches every year and the family comes close to fist fights over the last jar of them in the dead of winter. They are simply glorious – nothing like those syrupy ones you get from the grocery store. It might be worth learning to can just so I could lay in my own supply of those peaches.
Excellent work! Yup, so long as you are reasonably careful with the canning cleanliness thing,you’re fine.
YAY for you!!!! I want to learn to can too. Your success is making me braver.
ok, girl. You are totally inspiring me with your canning posts! As long as the lid on your jars doesn’t pop up when you push it down you made a seal and you’ll be ok. As in no mold ok.
I learned the harder way that if you don’t cook the fruit long enough when the jam sets up the fruit pieces will float to the top of the jar. Nothings wrong with it, just doesn’t look as pretty and the fruit pieces aren’t evenly distributed around the jar. Looks like you did an awesome job.
I love that this was your maiden voyage and look at how awesome you did!!