Beautiful, pectin free soft jam
with incredibly low sugar content for all types of fruit. I cooked up some tree
ripe apricots again this year. Can’t live without apricot jam, so many Hungarian
recipes depend on it. I now make as much as I can use within a year, jam does not
last forever, not even with copious amounts of sugar and pectin. The shelf life
of jam is maximum two years, after that it starts to loose its clarity and
begins to brown. It will be still edible provided the lids were properly
sealed, but by then the joy has gone out of them. Just to be safe and I don’t
run out of apricot jam, I always freeze a few bags of peeled, notice PEELED,
apricots, which I can cook up at a later day.
The thickening does not come from
gelling the liquid, it comes from cooking down the excess water. This type of
jam should be cooked in a wide, heavy pot in small batches. The wideness of the
pot quickens evaporation the heaviness prevents scorching, and cooking it in
small batches preserves the lightness. The longer you cook it the darker your
jam will get. One batch will fill four
half pint jars, [a half pint jar holds
approximately 230 ml of liquid]
My grandma always cracked an
apricot stone and added it to the jar before she poured in the jam. This gave
her apricot jam a subtle almond flavour. Only apricot stones mind you, she
insisted it was not good for you to put more in and never ever use stone from
other fruits.
PECTIN FREE JAM
2 pounds of prepared fruit
3/4 to 1 cup sugar
1+ Tbsp fresh lemon juice
- Work in a single batch. Do not double amounts.
- Peel, seed, and chop the fruit. Always, always peel peaches and apricots. The skin of apricots is a disagreeable thing in a jam. Very. Peel it exactly like you would a peach, drop it into boiling water for a minute, then plunge it into ice water and the skin will come off.
- Add 3/4 cup of sugar.
- Stir it up, cover and refrigerate it overnight.
- Most of the sugar will dissolve and the fruit would have released a substantial amount of liquid by next day.
- Prepare the jars, lids for canning.
- Put a large canner with hot water to the boil.
- Transfer all the fruit, sugar and accumulated fruit juice to a large, wide, heavy Dutch pot.
- Bring to a slow simmer over medium heat. Stay with it and stir it frequently, the fruit will scorch easily.
- When the fruit has softened, add the lemon juice.
- If the texture in the pan is too chunky or the pieces are too large, crush the fruit with a potato masher.
- Taste the jam. Add more sugar or lemon juice if needed. Continue the slow simmer and the stirring.
- When the jam is glossy and slightly thickened, transfer a dollop to a chilled plate.
- Run your finger through it and if the finger mark remains visible or runs together slowly, the jam is ready.
- Adjust the taste with sugar and lemon juice and give it a final stir.
- Ladle the jam into the warm jars, wipe the rims, put on the lids and screw on the caps.
- Carefully submerge the jars into the boiling water.
- Note: In case the canning was interrupted, and when you come back, make sure both the jars and the water bath are the same temperature. In other words, don’t put cold jars into a hot water bath or hot jars into cold water, thermal shock could crack your jars.
