Apricot Jam — Anybody Can Do It!

Of the many things I've canned, I like the jam the best and I think it's the easiest.  When I was 18 or 19 I made my first batch of jam just following the directions and it turned out perfect.  It was cheaper and tasted better than store bought.  I was sold! 

Start with washing the fruit and pitting it.  You can use a knife to cut it in half, or just use your thumbs at the stem and pull apart.  The fruit will naturally split into two.

Slice the fruit up into very small pieces.  You can use a knife but a food processor is easier.  We have a hand crank food processor that is fantastic.  Measure out six cups of the sliced up fruit.  Dump into your cooking pot, but don't fill more than half way.  We do five batches at a time in our 3.5 gallon stock pot.

For each batch of fruit, add two tablespoon of lemon juice, 1/4 cup of sugar, and one package of Sure-Jell for lower sugar recipes.  The Sure-Jell is the pectin that will make the jam be thick.  You can find it in the canning section at the store.

Since we make a lot of jam, I think the $2+ for each pectin package is too much so we buy pectin in bulk from Pacific Pectin.  Each ten pounds lasts one or two seasons and works out to about 90¢ per batch.  Use 1/3 cup for each batch.

Bring the whole thing to a boil and then add the sugar — 4 cups for each batch of fruit.  Stir and bring back to a roaring boil.  It takes me upwards of an hour to get five batches of fruit up to boiling.

At this stage, you could freeze the jam instead of canning.  Canning doesn't make it jam, it just preserves it.  To freeze, let the jam cool down, ladle into tuperwares and freeze.

We can instead of freezing because our freezers are too full as it is.  Canning isn't hard and it's nice to keep stuff on the shelves, staying good, without any electricity.

While the fruit is coming up to a boil, I fill my canner up to the jar rack with hot tap water and put it on the stove to boil.  I also count out the number of lids I'll need and boil those in a small sauce pan.

When the jam is boiling, I get it all put together.  Ladle the hot jam into quart jars.  Fill to about one inch from the top.  Wipe the rim with a clean cloth and use a little lid grabber (a plastic rod with a magnet at one end) to grab a lid from the boiling water.  Put the lid on the jar without touching the inside and hand snug a ring on. 

As you get each one done, put in the canner.  My canner holds nine jars, so I do jam in nine quart batches.  When all nine jars are finished, put the rack down, and turn the heat up.  When the water starts boiling, turn on the timer for 15 minutes.

When it's done, pull the rack up, and take the jars out.  Set them on the counter and leave them alone for 24 hours.  After 24 hours, take the rings off and test the lids to make sure they sealed.  Test by bonking each lid with your finger.  A sealed lid will make a dull thud but an unsealed lid make a sharper sound, you may even feel it move.  If it didn't seal, it just means it has to go in the frig and you eat it first.  The ones that sealed can go on the shelf for winter.

Apricots

Our one-year-old apricot tree produced only one apricot, which is already gone.  So we bought some from somebody selling them off their mature tree.

Fresh apricots are just barely okay in my opinion, but they are my favorite fruit dehydrated and in jam.  I got a bunch prepped for some solar drying using the racks from my electric dehydrator.  I think I've read it takes 2-3 days in the sun.

Almost three-quarters of them weren't ripe enough.  After sorting them, I put them in paper bags to work on ripening.  I left them in the pantry area, not because that is better than any where else, but because it's the mostly likely place I'll notice them. Too many times I've stumbled upon things a week after I should have worked on them.  I blame these lapses in memory on number of children rather than number of years.