Ever since I was a child I’ve wondered why preserving in jars is called “canning”. Not to sound like a Jerry Seinfeld nightclub routine, but why isn’t it called “jarring”? A mystery for the ages, I guess. Canning is a technology that’s been around since the Napoleonic era, when a fellow by the name of […]
READ ONAn excellent question! If you only had a very small quantity of fruit and made only a very small quantity of jam, you can simply pour it into a jar and put it straight into the fridge. It’ll keep there for months. You can give it away to jam-loving friends (just make sure to tell […]
READ ONFrequent commentator and question-asker Sally C. from Tip of the Iceberg wants to know, given what I wrote about large batches of jam: How can Smuckers make tons of the stuff? Or maybe I don’t want to know…. LOL. The answer is that big manufacturers make jam in large quantities by cooking their products in […]
READ ONYou mean one of these? If you’ve got the three hundred beans to drop, I say go for it. They make great jam and even better wall decorations in the off season. The advantage of a piece of equipment like this lies primarily in the ability of the metal to conduct heat. That quick heat […]
READ ONThis is a question that many an aspiring jam maker has asked him/herself. I mean, if I’ve got three quarts of raspberries why should I restrain myself to a recipe that calls for just one quart of fruit? Can’t I just triple the recipe and cook the whole mess at one time? The answer: no. […]
READ ONBlueberry-cinnamon jam to be precise, though these general instructions can be applied to just about any kind of jam. It all starts of course with fruit. Most people use fresh fruit, fresh picked especially, but I’ve known more than a few people to use frozen. Frozen? Yes, frozen. It doesn’t make terribly much sense from […]
READ ONMy first-ever attempt at making blueberry jam was a true disaster, the product of an overly anxious jam newbie obsessed with getting a “gel”. I was so busy running back and forth between my refrigerator and the jam pot checking for thickening, you see, that I utterly failed to notice I’d cooked my jam for […]
READ ONThe great fear that all aspiring jam makers bring to the stovetop is: how will I know when I have a “gel”? Which is to say, how does one know when the point of maximum thickness has been reached? All sorts of home-spun methods have been devised to ascertain the doneness of jam. There’s the […]
READ ONOther than sweetness, the thing that truly defines jam is its texture. In a perfect universe, that texture is thick yet still slightly soupy, “gel”-like but still very spoonable. Just like grandma used to make. Oh yes, I know that many of the most current recipes encourage cooks to employ packaged pectin until their jam […]
READ ONThe Battle of Vienna, a conflict I have often referred to as the most baking-intensive conflict in the history of man, was begun this day in 1683.
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