A beginner's guide … to making your own jam
We all have that wonderful person(s) in our life who is great at making all things homemade. The friend who will gift you with quince paste made from the tree in their backyard, the neighbour who brings over a tangy jar of relish or a mother-in-law who drops in with a delicious jar of homemade raspberry jam. Perhaps you’ve wondered how difficult it would be to make them yourself? So, we did a little digging and it turns out that while making jam can be a laborious task, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Jam can be incredibly easy to make. We’ve taken the confusion out of making homemade jam with a guide for absolute beginners.
Where to start:
Decide on the fruit, you can use fresh or frozen, it really doesn’t matter. But for this recipe, you will need about 1.4 kg fruit. If you are using stone fruit like apricots or nectarines, pit them before weighing and cutting them into chunks of approximately 2.5 centimetres in diameter.
You will need these ingredients:
3 1/3 cups caster sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoon coarse salt
What next:
Put fruit, sugar and salt into a pot and boil until the sugar and salt have dissolved. Then add lemon juice. Continue boiling the mixture, stirring frequently until the bubbling starts to slow down and the jam thickens. The fruit will start to come to the surface and at this point, you can test it with a metal spoon. The jam should slide off the spoon in clumps, pooling together. Spoon any foam from the top of the jam and pour into sterilised jars.
Be sure to leave some room at the top for your jam to expand as it cools.
