Tag: blackberry jam

Turkey Tracks: Blackberry Jam

Turkey Tracks:  August 21, 2013

Blackberry Jam

When I was growing up, we spent some of every summer with my maternal grandmother, Louisa Phillips Bryan, in Reynolds, Georgia.

I’m sure my grandfather, Sydney Hoke Bryan, was also involved–he was a quiet rock that held the family together.  And he was deeply involved in growing food and in preserving food.  He had a large vegetable and flower garden “out on the farm”–and in the summer he went out there early and returned with huge baskets filled with vegetables and flowers.  One of my vivid memories is the two of them putting up tomatoes in an outdoor kitchen they fashioned in the back yard under a shed.  And, I remember hams hanging in the smoke house too.

But it was my grandmother who made the blackberry jam in the summers.   And, later, my mother.  But mother’s blackberry making was always limited by having wild blackberries nearby to pick.  We were tasked with picking blackberries in the summers–though most of the berries we picked landed up in cobblers for “dinner”–which was in the middle of the day.  Local children used to bring the blackberries they had picked to the house for sale, and that’s when my grandmother made jelly.  I have memories of cheesecloth to drains off the seeds and of melting wax for the lids…  And of discussions about whether to seed the jam/jelly or not.

I have access to a blackberry patch here in Maine–and it has been the greatest joy to pick them and to make jam.  And I am so grateful for the wonderful family who allow me to pick their berries.  What a gift!

Some years are better blackberry years than others.  And, it takes a lot of blackberries to make a jam.  One year we had blackberries, but there had been no rain, and the berries just didn’t have enough moisture to make good jam.  And every three or four years it’s a good idea to mow the patch to retard the overgrowth of other plants trying, also, to grow there.  Eventually they will crowd out a blackberry patch.  So when I make a batch of jam, I never know how far I will have to stretch it so as not to completely run out.

This year is a GREAT blackberry year.  And last Sunday, I picked about two gallons alongside friends Giovanna McCarthy and Margaret Rauenhorst.  I came home and made the jam while the berries were fresh.  I was down to my last jar–and that was dated 2010.

Blackberries

The first thing you need to know is that when you are picking blackberries, be sure to pick about one not-so-ripe mostly red berry (not a hard red one) for about every 30 or so berries.  The red berries have pectin in them that will make the jam jell.

Also, you want to make any jam or jelly in SMALL BATCHES.  I made two separate batches with these berries.

The other thing you need to know is what the jelling point is for your geographic area–and that’s info you can determine from either an internet search or from a Ball Canning Book.  At my house here in Maine, it’s 216 degrees.  Down in town, it may be a bit different.  Obviously you’ll need a candy thermometer unless you have a knack for telling when the batch is ready.  I don’t.

I put all of the berries into a pan, add about a 1/2 cup of water so they don’t burn on the bottom, and heat them to render the juice.

Here’s the pan of berries starting to heat up–note how he berries start to turn red.  I like to use my heavy Creuset pan–the cast iron holds heat so beautifully and evenly.  Use a heavy bottomed pan–not a thin one.   I smash them with a potato smasher to help the juice-rendering process along

Blackberries cooking

When the berries have cooked about five minutes, you need to decide if you want seeds or not.  I put the berries through a mill and remove the seeds–though I always have a few escapees.  Do this process in the sink as there is some inevitable spattering and you don’t want blackberry juice staining surfaces in your kitchen.

Deseeding blackberry jam

Put the juice back into the cleaned pan and add sugar. .  For about 9 cups of berries, I add 6 cups of sugar.  The recipes call for more, but this ratio works fine for me.  Here the rendered juice is really booking along.  It’s RED, isn’t it?  I don’t attempt to skim any of the foam at the top.

Blackberries cooking 2

Watch your heat–you want a steady boil at pretty high heat, but you don’t want the pan to overflow or the batch to burn.  DON’T LEAVE THE KITCHEN.  You will want to start testing for the jell point any time now.  You don’t want tough jam.

While the batch cooks, put your clean jars and caps in HOT water in a bowl in your sink–and arrange a space on your counter where you can fill your jars.  I have a large ladle that I use to dip up the jam.

I LOVE my large canning funnel.  It fits all jar sizes and makes filling the jars easy.

Canning funnel

Fill the jars, leaving about 1/2 inch clear.  I used to top the jam with melted paraffin wax, but I don’t do that anymore.  The jam keeps just fine without it.

Screw on the lids really tight and with a protective towel (they are HOT), turn each one upside down–which creates a nice vacuum seal on each jar.  Watch to make sure you don’t have a leaky one where the threads were just not tight enough.  Be careful picking up a leaky jar–the jelly is HOT.

Blackberry jam, Aug. 2013

Label the tops–using a year date, too.  I also make blueberry jam, so sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between these two jams in the jars.

ENJOY!

Turkey Tracks: Blueberry Jam

Turkey Tracks:  November 13, 2011

Blueberry Jam

Talula is coming for Christmas.

Talula loves blueberry and blackberry jam.

This year she’s going to get POPOVERS with her homemade jam.

Popovers are dead easy:

Put the following combination of flour, eggs, milk, and salt into a blender, blend it up, and pour the mixture into butter-greased TALL popover forms–filling each 3/4 full.  (If you don’t fill the form 3/4 full, the resulting popover is mostly air inside the crust, rather than having a middle that is still soft and yummy and altogether satisfying.)  I have two popover pans, each with 6 forms.  They look like big muffin tins–only each stands alone since the rising popover needs a lot of space around it.

This recipe is for about 9-10 popovers.  You can halve it, or add to it, for 12 popovers.  If you like cheese popovers, throw some cheese in–about a cup I’d say, for 6 popovers.

4 eggs, 2 cups of AP flour, 2 cups of milk, some salt.

For 12, I’m going to try 6 eggs, 3 cups each of flour and milk, and salt.

Easy, right!

Yes, it’s a white flour-based recipe, but I use really good eggs and our raw milk, so I think it’s ok to have popovers as a special treat.

Here’s a picture of cold cheese popovers–which we ate with our dinner after having their mates for breakfast.   They do shrink a bit when cooling.  So, eat them HOT–and 2 of them with butter and jam is a filling breakfast.

As for the blackberry jam–there is one jar to spare before next summer, when there will be one more.  Talula comes in July, and the blackberries are ripe in August, so we have to hoard and parcel out what’s left of the jam on hand–especially since 2010 was very dry and as this year we didn’t get any blackberries as it was the year to cut back the patch and let it grow anew.a

As for blueberry jam, I’m all set for Talula–and her father, mother, brothers, and sister:

Making blueberry jam is easy.

You just fill a heavy pan about 1/2 full of organic berries.  (We have the tiny, very flavorful Maine blueberries–and you can take “wild” out of that title since they are VERY cultivated.)  I use about a cup of sugar to 3-4 cups of berries, and I grate in the rind of one lemon for a batch this size.  Sometimes I add the juice too, but go slow as the mixture can get very lemony.  Taste the jam as you go along–if it isn’t sweet enough, add more sugar.  But, start with less since too much sugar really ruins the whole batch.

Then, you just cook it down until the juice begins to jell on the spoon you use to stir it with every now and then.  You can see that the mixture is bubbling pretty hard.  Let some of the juice dribble on a plate, let it cool, and you can tell if the juice is starting to thicken up.  You really don’t want blueberry jam to get too thick, so I fall off on the side of a looser jam that isn’t overly cooked to death.   (With blackberries, I am more particular and do use a candy thermometer–but that involves figuring out what the jam point is in your area, which involves how above sea level you are, and so forth.  Any good canning book–like the Ball Canning Book–can walk you through that exercise–and it is a good thing to do.)

It really helps to have a canning funnel when you start to put the jam into clean Mason jars.  The wide mouth accepts a full ladle of hot jam, and the small bottom keeps it all going into the jar.  Here’s what one looks like:

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Once you start to make jams and jellies, it’s hard to go back to the store bought.  Most of them are so full of pectin that they taste like rubber.   If I’m going to eat that sugar, I at least want to have it accompanied by real fruit, not by fillers.

I put the hot jars upside down–which helps the top to form a vacuum–until they cool–as you can see from the picture.