I went to grab a jar of Homemade Jam out of my cupboard, and realized that I was down to my last jar!!
Uh oh! It hadn’t realized we were getting so low. The thought of buying store-bought jam now seems weird to me (other than on vacation or something).
The problem is Blackberry/Marionberry season is not quite ready yet – we still have another month at least. Doh!
I would just make Strawberry Jam – I love strawberry jam, and I grew up eating it. My husband prefers blackberry/Marionberry jam, and I do have to admit it is, by far, superior. It is DELICIOUS. And we are lucky to live in an area that Blackberries are like weeds and easily available for free. We usually go and purchase Marionberries for our jam making though! 🙂
Well, Target happened to be running a sale, and buying some frozen berries was much cheaper than buying the strawberries that were on sale. They had a mixed berry mix, so I thought it would make some really good jam. I have never made jam with frozen berries, but I remember reading it was possible, so I thought I would try it out! So I bought 2 mixed berry bags, for about $3 total (for both bags), and they included blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries.
I finally got around to washing a few canning jars, and finding some time to make the jam. It doesn’t take long to make, I just kept forgetting, until we were in desperate need of making some!
So I put the frozen berries in my big pot – there was about 5 cups of berries total. I turned on the burner and they slowly defrosted. I then took my potato masher and mashed up all the berries.
Now I suggest following the directions on your pectin. That is what I always do – for all measurements and directions – and I have always had successful jam!
After mashing up my berries, I added in all my pectin and let my berries come up to a boil
Then I added in my sugar
It always looks like a lot of sugar. Great thing about making it yourself, you control all the ingredients, including the amount of sugar. All that is in my Jam is sugar, berries, and pectin – can the same be said of the store brand?
Once all the sugar was mixed in, I brought it back up to a boil, and boiled it for a minute. This is the part where I tell my husband, “When I get spattered, and it won’t stop, it means it is done” Ha! Make sure you either wear an apron or a red shirt (I’d forgotten about this, luckily, I was wearing a red shirt!) for any jam splatter!
Mmmmm… Delicious Jam! What it looks like when it’s done!
Now you could totally just smear some on a piece of toast right now… I have been known to do this
You could even just let it cool, put it in a container, and put in your refrigerator and call it good. Nothing wrong with that!
I didn’t have any foam this time – so there was none to skim off.
I went ahead and processed my jam. I ladled it up into the jars, wiped off the rims, put on the new lids, and screwed the rings onto the jars.
I then put them in a boiling water bath in my HUGE stock pot, for about 10 minutes
I took them out and let them cool.
I did eat some of the leftover jam from the pot – DELICIOUS! The Jam set up beautifully and using frozen berries worked REALLY well. I guess I won’t be afraid to use frozen berries to make jam again – especially if I can get a good deal. I made 4 pints of Jam for only about $4 worth of ingredients and about 20 minutes of my time (10 of that just waiting to take them out of their water bath!) – not too bad!
Yum! Nothing like homemade Jam… 🙂 It is funny that this is the first “small” batch of jam that I have made – I usually do it on a BIG scale. Even the first time I did it, I did like 12 pints… I guess I don’t start small and just jump head first into almost everything 😛
Now to make some more Homemade Jam again on a BIGGER scale (like many, many, many pints to get us through the year) in a month or so!
