Jammin' It

We haven't expanded our garden to include any fruit yet, but my husband's aunt and uncle have lots of property and tons of blueberry and blackberry bushes.  They invite any willing members of the family to come and pick berries any time since they can't possibly eat them all.  My husband and I took them up on their offer and I decided to make some jam with the gallons of blueberries and blackberries we'd picked.

Though this was my first attempt at making jam, it proved to be really easy.  I decided to go the old fashioned route, avoiding the need for added pectin.  This left me with just two ingredients: berries (9 cups) and sugar (6 cups).  The first step was to squish the berries, which I did with a potato masher.

Next, I dumped them into a big pot and mixed in the sugar.  You can see, at left, that I started using a large soup pot with the blueberries.  I later ended up dumping the blueberry mixture into one of my water bath canners because boiling fruit makes A LOT of foam and everything was about to spill over.  So, if you attempt this, be advised you need a BIG pot with several inches of space beyond the height of the fruit.

Because I was making pretty big batches, the berry and sugar mixtures took quite a while to boil and thicken up.  I think it took nearly an hour of constant boiling before the desired consistency was reached. During this time, it was really important to keep stirring periodically because the fruit can become stuck on the bottom of the pot and scald.

Once the mixtures started to thicken, I had to keep testing it to see if they had reached the jellying point.  I decided to go with the cold plate method because I didn't trust my assessment of whether the jam was properly sheeting off the spoon since this was my first time.

Once the jam had reached the jellying point, I immediately removed it from the heat and funneled it into half pint jars.  I processed them for ten minutes and all sealed successfully.

I gave some away and we still have 14 jars in our pantry, so I am sure we'll be enjoying blueberry and blackberry jam for a long time!