I made a small batch of sour cherry jam this year (I’m the only one who’ll eat it) and the consistency was pretty solidly “whole cherries in a thickened syrup” and that’s just fine with me. Delicious on toasted sourdough with goat cheese for breakfast.
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Beautiful!
Also made strawberry, raspberry and red currant. A really striking, red jam. Also not as sweet as all strawberry, but next time I might cut some sugar…
I think I’m going to make one jar of these with my first handful of yellow Scotch Bonnet “Jean”.
I’m not sure why they go in a hot water bath if they are to be stored in the refrigerator. Any thoughts?
I rarely to never hot-water-bath-process my pickles, opting instead to keep them in the fridge. I prefer the resulting crunch. I do make sure the brine is boiling hot before pouring over the veg and spices. I’ve never had an issue, and have held some pickles in the fridge up to two years. YMMV.
I could have written this exact comment myself. I hate wasting, especially when I’ve gone to the trouble to make something time consuming. The only way to get anything out of those top corners is with your hooked finger. So uncouth!
That is dumb, or at the very least confusing. You water-bath can things to make them shelf-stable! Ugh. Food bloggers.
I usually use those pretty squat jars for pickled items, or whole fruits (cherries, apricots, plums). But when I do use them for soft preserves, the last bits of preserve are “rinsed” out with the ingredients for a vinaigrette. Add oil, vinegar, salt, pepper… pop on the lid and give everything a good shake!
Yesterday I made foraged wild berry (blackberry, blueberry, and wineberry) and wineberry jams. I have a few cups of foraged blackberries in the freezer for when I get more jars. Enjoyed the wineberry jam on some cottage cheese this morning.
Four red fruit jam: strawberries, sour cherries, raspberries and red currants. I probably boiled a little long considering the red currants… the jam is very, very set!!
Red pepper jam is a b**ch to set. I have more failures with that than anything else. Like a. LOT more. Lately, I’ve just been bumping up the pectin about 50%. That seems to work & the taste is fine. I use either SurJel low sugar or DutchJel Light (hard to find in small quantities). I feel your pain.
Lovely~
Arghh. Full stop… We’ve probably already covered this, but I was about to make more than two jars of pluot jam from my favorite small batch recipe
and again read this;
I can’t read the article (behind a paywall), but knowing CI, I can guess how it reads.
Small batch jamming is great. Quick, easy, and yes, the product is probably better as for one, it doesn’t take as long to bring to temperature. It’s a great way to deal with small bits of stuff from the garden - jam it!
That said, it can be really impractical for the homesteading type. If you eat a lot of jam, go big. Just my $0.02.
ETA: I use an asparagus steamer for small batch canning. It can hold one pint, or one half pint combined with one quarter pint, if you stack them.
I don’t understand this at all. (But paywall.) If you use low or no-sugar jam pectin, you can certainly can low or no-sugar jam. I guess the CI recipe doesn’t call for any. So…add some. Use lemon juice. NBD.
Life’s too short for dumb recipes (I have a CI subscription and even I can’t see the “sugar chart” to which they refer.) And why on earth wouldn’t the TITLE of a jam recipe include if it’s refrigerator jam or not? STUPID. Yeah, I feel strongly about this.
Small-batch recipes suitable for canning abound for free on foodinjars.com.
About to make my first apricot jam of the year 
Sorry! It always takes me a minute to find the CI easy jam proportions in the recipe. I like that it let’s me macerate fruit, and get it in to jars the next day.
@mig , I have food in jars and will look for the equivalent.
I think this is “the chart”
Yeah, I do that too.
You can improvise with a 3:1 ratio, let it macerate, and cook the next day. That’s what I’d do.
