Almost every day I walk out into the garden, I come back with a few cups of berries. Yes, it seems the blackberry bushes I planted 3 summers ago and last year blueberry bushes are finally producing. This has been the best year for most of our fruit trees as well. But with an overload of berries I’m doing small batches of jam as we go. I don’t always want to wait until I have a huge bowl, and instead have been doing mixed berry jams.
This year, to save a little on the budget, I’ve decided to make some of the jams without the use of pectin. The berries have a natural pectin in them and after heating will thicken up naturally. Your jams wont be as thick like if you used pectin, just a bit looser and easily spreadable.
Ingredients:
4 Cups Mixed berries – We did Blackberries, Blueberries and Cherries from our garden- 4 Cups of Sugar
- 1 Tbsp Lemon Juice
Instructions:
- Place 8 clean 8 oz mason jars on a rack in your stock pot. (I used 4 16 oz jars – always prepare 1 extra jar and lid set than the recipe requires, trust me you will appreciate that if you mess one up!) Fill the jars and stock pot with cool water until it completely covers the top of the jars. Cover and put on medium heat. Simmer but do not boil.
- Prepare 8 lid sets, put the bands aside and put the flat lids in a small sauce pan and put on medium heat. Do not boil, but keep warm through the whole process.
- Measure out your sugar and put in a medium sized bowl and set aside. Rinse your berries and pit your cherries. Remember anything that’s green might like pretty but wont taste good in your jelly!
- Take your clean berries and put them in a pie dish and smash them with a potato masher. Leaving some chunks is fine, but we don’t want it too chunky. Put all of your fruit into a medium sized stainless steel saucepan, add in your lemon juice and sugar.
- Bring the mixture to a rolling boil. Mix constantly until it is incorporated into the mixture. Return it to a rolling boil that doesn’t stop while you stir. This may take 5-10 minutes to get to, but keep stirring. Once it reaches that point, remove from heat and skim any of the foam off the top. Remove the vanilla bean pieces.
- Now, remove the jars from the warm bath. Tip them as you pull them out and pour the water back into the pan. Place them on a towel on the counter with the opening up. Do not dry them! Just put them down and put the funnel in. Ladel the hot jelly into each jar until there is about 1/4 inch of space in the top. Once all jars are full, take a plastic or wooden utensil and move it around to get extra air bubbles out.
- Take the small magnet tool and remove flat lids from their hot bath. Place over top of each jar. By hand screw on the collars, but not too tight! Remember some air still needs to get out of each jar.
- Place the jars back into the hot stock pot and replace the lid. Turn your temperature up to high. When it starts to do a rolling boil, start a timer for 10 minutes.
- After the jars have processed for 10 minutes, turn off the heat and remove the lid to the pan. Let cool for 5 minutes. Remove all the jars without tipping them and place them back on the towel. Remember – don’t towel them off!
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