Learn Home Preserving - Start with Homemade Jam

Books about home preserving will give you a perspective on the world of home preserving, and lots of recipes and techniques.

Once you are ready to get deeper into home preserving , your "kit" will expand to include tools like the big enameled pot called a canner, which you will need for the water bath processing method, and lots of other tools that you will need when you get to preserving, such as a jar lifter, to take the processed jars out of the boiling water.

Other things you will need, depending on what you're putting up, will include couple of your own cooking pots (non-reactive, such as stainless or enameled) to make the jam, and sterilize the lids, and some kitchen towels to use on your counter, to place the hot jars so they can cool.

Photo by kimbesa

If you're never tasted home made jam, such as strawberry, you are in for a treat. Choose fruit that is fully ripe. With just the fruit, sugar and pectin (which comes in powdered or liquid form) you can make some beautiful and tasty jam.

For starters, you would not even have to preserve the jam, just put it in jars and keep it in the refrigerator. Use within a month. Lots of yummy toast and muffins will be yours to enjoy, and serve for family and friends. Those sweet thumbprint cookies are even better with homemade jam. Or make a soft version of your preserves and serve as an ice cream topping.

Once you know how to make jam, you can preserve some for the cold months, or to give as special gifts. There are no-sugar recipes for special diets, and the product is great for everyone to enjoy.

After practicing on jam, if you want to expand into other foods, like putting up peaches, making and preserving pickles, tomatoes and all their variations...anything you want will be within your reach. It is really satisfying to open your pantry on a snowy winter day and take out some jars of wonderful fruits and vegetables preserved during the peak of the harvest season.

Photo by kimbesa, at Detroit's Eastern Market.

Pectin is used for certain fruits that don't have enough naturally to cause the jam to thicken. Some recipes don't include it, either because the fruit has enough already (such as apples) or because the product is intended to be soft (such as for a jellied sauce or ice cream topping). Pectin comes in powdered or liquid form.

Some jam recipes don't add sugar. Make sure to use the best fruit for these. Your product will be all the better for it.

The caps for canning jars are in two parts: bands and lids. the bands are reusable but the lids are not. As you are filling your jars, make sure that the rim of the jar is completely clean. Otherwise the jar won't seal properly.

Years ago at home, we used paraffin to seal jam jars. This involved filling hot, sterilized jars with hot jam, then carefully pouring the hot wax on top, about a quarter inch thick, and making sure it touched the glass all the way around to seal.

In the long run, learning the water bath method will give you more flexibility to expand your canning repertoire, as jam is the only food that can be preserved with the wax method. Wax can be tricky to work with for newbies, and requires a "sacrifice" pot to use to heat the wax, never to be used for anything else. .

Photo by kimbesa

Flavorful jam in handy small jars. Many jam recipes will make 6 half-pint jars, using about 2 pounds of fruit. These are fine size recipes for starting out. They will produce enough jam to enjoy within a reasonable length of time, and if there is a "flub," it won't be the end of the world.

Though...jam is not hard. Just follow a recipe from a good source, read it over beforehand, and set aside an afternoon when you won't be rushed or have interruptions.

Jam uses the whole fruit, as compared to jelly, which is strained to remove seeds and pulp, just using the juice of the fruit. Jams are easier to make because their recipes skip the straining and juicing steps.

For strawberries, jam will make a prettier product. Don't think I've seen a strawberry jelly recipe, come to think about it, but there probably is one somewhere. Jelly is usually made from apples, sometimes grapes, raspberries or blackberries. Personally, I favor jams because of the extra food value of the pulp.

There are lots of cute canning jars in the marketplace, designed to use at home, or when you give your jam as gifts. If you get into this, you may find that all your holiday gifts are made in the summer time, and you are done by September.

What a great gift to yourself, having that aspect of the holiday season handled, so you can enjoy baking cookies, attending concerts, and the rest of the season's activities.

Several of my relatives would rather receive a few jars of home canned peaches, for example, than anything else.