Any Jam Makers or Home Canners Out There?

Thanks for the info! I’ll definitely look into it. Weck let me down about the time the pandemic started and
I’ve moved on.

I’m curious, too. How does the canning proceed? Thanks!

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@mts @bogman , I use the same water bath method and processing times for one-piece lids as for the more typical two-piece lids. Check the jar volume against your recipe, and then round up to sort your processing time.
For some jars, I’ve had to cut a special funnel to fit the neck. Found an inexpensive plastic funnel, and sliced off the bottom with my kitchen knife.

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Shown here are two types of one piece lids:

The lid on the left is a continuous thread (Ct) lid for a standard mason jar. The lid on the right is a lug lid for one of the tureen jars i put the marmalade in. If you look closely you can see the lugs (bumps) around the edge of the lids. Lug lids and CT lids are NOT interchangeable even on the same size jars. Lug lids work the same as regular lids. Tighten them & process the same as any other. One piece CT lids you have to be careful not to overtighten or the lids will crimp.

One advantage to one piece lids is the colors:

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I just used the last of the local citrus, inspired by a few citrus jam recipes, and using Pomona pectin. Came out grainy and too sweet, and I remember I’ve done this before.

I don’t know if it’s worth “fixing”, but might try it with this summers peppers. Anyone have experience with an orange pepper jam using low sugar pectin recipes?

Tonight: small batch of apricot.

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Looks great and I bet it smells amazing @mig

Note to self; see past responses from @JoeBabbitt about proportions

This does not suck. ETA: even though the photo does :slight_smile:

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I’ve made quite a few batches of jam so far this year:

Strawberry Vanilla
Strawberry champagne
Blueberry rhubarb
Raspberry rhubarb
Strawberry Margarita
and one batch of rhubarb chutney

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Also made apricot jam a few weeks ago, helped by them being on sale at 3.50 euro per kilogram. Super simple recipe, just 40% sugar.

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Back in the day I’d make a few hundred jars of jam each summer, both for ourselves and for gifting. Now, we’re all so old and empty nested, nobody eats or needs a lot of jam anymore. Maybe that’s a good thing…I’m slowing down in general.

This week I made small batches of both sour-cherry jam and old-fashioned raspberry jam. Just fruit or berries, sugar and lemon juice – no pectin.

I had to pay through the nose for the raspberries at the farmer’s market. The cost of the cherries was just a little elbow grease.

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Heard. But just sort of old and intermittently empty nested. :blush:

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Got my first sour cherries yesterday… hoping to get some more ( and likely spend several hours this week-end pitting…

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What will you make?

Sour cherry vanilla jam: pretty sure I have a recipe in a Food in Jars cookbook?

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What are your thoughts on little black specks on the lid of a jam that had been sealed? I bought a jar of jelly from a home cook who befriended me on Instagram. 2 little specks of black on the lid. I scraped it with my finger. I thought they might be mold. There was a little bit of a pattern that suggested the specks could be mold, or whatever was black was getting bigger.

I’m very mold-adverse, so I threw out the jelly.

I was looking online and there are lots of comments about black stuff under the lid, that it might be a chemical reaction and not mold.

Does anyone have experience with this?

What do you do?

I’m with you. Particularly because you didn’t do the canning yourself, I wouldn’t think there’d be a reasonable way to distinguish between mold and a benign reason for the black specks you spotted on the lid.

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When in doubt, throw it out especially if those black dots are on the underside of the lid. Ewwww!

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Where did you get them? Haven’t seen them in Ottawa yet.

I just saw them at my local fruit stand!

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