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Soooooo I guess I should mention that I’ve never canned fruit jam before. This was my first time, y’all. And let me tell you…
It’s a good time.
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I mean, I’ve only been canning since January, but I’ve never even tasted home-canned fruit jam. I ended up trying three different concoctions for this month’s Tigress Can Jam. First I made a blackberry jelly (a recipe will come, don’t worry), but I found it too sweet. Way, WAY too sweet for me. I tasted sugar rather than fruit, and what’s the point of that?
Having striked out on that first run, I was all about trying a low-sugar jam for the second round. I had to do a little research but I really liked the low-sugar. I hadn’t seen a ton of low-sugar recipes, but after a little searching, I found some low-sugar pectin at the store. It depends on which pectin you choose to use (I ended up using both Sure-Jell in one batch and Pomona in another) as to how exactly you’ll need to add the pectin.
I’ve mostly just given these away to friends, but I’m thinking this, with cream cheese… on toast. Sigh. Yummy.
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Fresh Strawberry Jam
From The Kitchenette
Makes 3 half-pint jars or 6 4-oz jars
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Gather:
4 pounds strawberries, washed, hulled, and quartered
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar, plus 2 tablespoons
1 packet low-sugar pectin
Prepare:
Toss strawberries with sugar and let macerate overnight.
The next morning, put a small (non-plastic) plate in the freezer. Bring a hot-water bath canner (or very large pot) to boil and sterilize jars by boiling glass jars for at least 10 minutes. Let stand in hot water until ready to fill with jam.
Bring a small pot of water to boil over high heat (this will be used to sterilize the lids for the jars.)
Add macerated strawberries to a heavy pot and bring to boil over medium-high heat. Mix pectin and 2 tablespoons of sugar in a small bowl. Once strawberries come to boil, add pectin/sugar mixture and stir to dissolve. Bring back to boil, and then reduce to heat to medium.
Add lids to boiling water. Boil for at least 5 minutes to soften the rubber seal.
Begin testing the jam for a proper “set” as it begins to thicken, or after approximately 15 minutes of cooking the jam. To test the jam, drop a small spoonful onto the frozen plate, wait 10 seconds, and then run your finger through the jam. If the top of the jam wrinkles, your jam has set. If the jam is still runny, cook for 5 more minutes, and test again.
When your jam is ready to can, pull the jars out of the hot water, and carefully ladle jam into each jar until there is 1/4 inch space between the top of the jar and the top of the jam. Run a knife around the inside of the jar to remove any air bubbles. Wipe the lid of the jar to clean off any jam that may have been spilled, and top the jar with a lid from the hot water, and twist on a ring. Repeat with other jars.
Boil the jars in a pot for 10 minutes (if at sea level; use an altitude-adjustment chart if you’re more than 1000 feet above sea level).
After the jars have been boiled, for 10 minutes, remove the jars from the canner and let stand on a towel for up to 24 hours. Check the seals (the lids will depress, you may hear a “pop” when they do). Remove the rings and store in a cool place.
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Ohaithere kids! My bad for neglecting the blog for the past two weeks… I was busy squeeing my pants over getting onto foodgawker for the first time… and then I had to tend to my real-life job, which tends to generally suck all the wit and cheer right out of me, leaving none for craftily weaving quips about Chuck Bass into stories about zucchini.
But, back to real life. I’ve been cooking a lot lately (and taking photos! lots of photos!) and using local produce where possible… because, you know, there just isn’t that much growing here in Colorado until late May, give or take a week. You may remember I made a trip to the Boulder Farmer’s Market a few weekends ago, and low and behold, I still hadn’t used up that head of red cabbage. But one of my clients was having a potluck lunch the other day, and instead of bringing a bag of nacho chips, I chose to contribute a head of 3-week-old cabbage with some sweet apples and mustard dressing (I know, I’m such a pal… I have their health issues in mind). Surprisingly, even though I assumed I would be shunned for bringing vegetables, the slaw was a big hit. I got a lot of requests for the recipe for the dressing… which totes made my day because I really just made that part up.
This is a great make-ahead recipe, and plus, it’s pretty local if you have storage apples and locally-grown cabbage. I’m not such a fan of the mayonnaise-based coleslaw recipes, and so this is its exact opposite – a sweet, crunchy, mustard-y slaw that is just all-around amazing.
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Cabbage and Apple Slaw
From The Kitchenette
Serves 8 as a side
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Gather:
1 medium head cabbage
3 apples, of the tart/sour persuasion
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons dijon mustard
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Prepare:
Halve the head of cabbage, and cut each half into thin strips. If the cabbage pieces are more than a few inches long, cut them in half so that they are easier to eat. Cut the apple into 1/4 to 1/8 inch matchstick pieces.
Whisk the olive oil, dijon, vinegar, and lemon juice in the bottom of a bowl. Add the cabbage and apple, and toss well to coat. Let sit for 20 minutes before serving to allow the cabbage to soften somewhat.
(Do ahead: Up to 24 hours in advance, cut the cabbage and apples as directed. Separate the apples into a plastic bag, add 1 tablespoon of the lemon juice and toss to coat. Prepare the dressing as directed, using only the remaining tablespoon of lemon juice. Mix approximately 30 minutes prior to serving.)
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Now Playing: Band of Skulls / Light of the Morning
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(turn down the volume so it doesn’t bust your speakers)
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WOOT. My first canning challenge for the Tigress Can Jam is complete! Can we please talk about awesome this is?!?
*crickets*
… So that’s a no? Darn. That’s okay… I got the proper amount of excitement from my two BFFs, Sam and Anna, through email.
Me: I haven’t posted about it yet but did you both know that I SUCCESSFULLY CANNED something the other day? It was totes awesome.
(Anna and Sam jabber on about such important topics as Staub’s cheaper line of cookware for BloodBath&Beyond, the undiscovered awesomeness of hardware stores, and the chances of there being a shirtless Channing Tatum scene or two or four in his new movie.)
Me: excuse me, neither of you expressed the appropriate amount of fangirl squeeing that i successfully canned something without 1) burning myself 2) burning my husband or 3) burning my house down.
Anna: SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Sam: i guess i don’t fully understand the danger of canning. it involves boiling water and tongs, right?
Me: true, i guess it’s not exactly James Bond material. i guess the danger is more that you won’t get the proper seal and that you’ll accidentally grow crazy botulism in the jar?
Sam: aaah so a delayed death. report back in a few months =)
So yeah, assuming that I’m still writing posts in a few months… we can assume everything I canned this time around was safe to eat. Nothing like a little suspense to liven up the blog posts, right? I actually planned it like this… it will be like a soap opera… it will take 4 weeks for 1 pot of coffee to brew and you’ll have to come back every day to see if I died of botulism spores or if I was stabbed by my neighbor who suffocated me with the wet filter full of coffee grounds.
For the first month of the Tigress Can Jam, we are canning citrus! Very exciting, non? I couldn’t help myself when I went to the grocery store and there were heaps of blood oranges for $1.50 a pound. And then there were Meyer lemons on sale for $1.25 a pound, so I got a bunch of those too… not sure what I’m going to do with the rest of them yet. Having never made marmalade, I was thinking that it a couple of hours devoted to making a crapload of marmalade would be a relaxing activity.
… yeah. Not so much. Dude, making marmalade is HARD. You’ve got to juice the oranges (which I did by hand) and then cut out the pith, then julienne the zest, and after all that work… you get to cook it. However, what I didn’t expect was how easy the actual canning part of the process went. Go figure. I was so scared that I was going to screw something up and then it turned out to be crazy easy! And of course I had to share my excitement with the world over Twitter:
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click to enlarge my twitter enthusiasm
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… because I was so proud of myself. I’ve never canned anything before and canning is necessary knowledge for an aspiring hippie like myself. Unfortunately my first marmalade endeavor only yielded three 8oz jars of marmalade, which was a wee bit less than I was expecting. But I still have lots of oranges left, so I might make another batch (or something similar) tonight.
PS. I was only able to make this marmalade because my super-awesome father-in-law, Mike, sent me a care package of brand-new canning equipment! He’s getting a jar in the mail this weekend. Hope it’s actually good!
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Blood Orange and Meyer Lemon Marmalade
Adapted from The Hungry Engineer and Simply Recipes
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Ingredients:
3 pounds blood oranges, washed and dried
4 cups water
2 Meyer lemons
2-3 cups sugar
Equipment:
Medium saucepan
candy thermometer
Canning pot
4 8-0z mason jars with lids and rings
Directions:
Scrub the oranges clean. Cut the oranges in half and juice them, one by one, over a strainer until you have 2 cups of juice. Set aside the juice. As you juice the oranges, set aside the seeds and membranes, as they will be used for making pectin. For each juiced orange half, use a spoon to dig out the pith as much as you can. You may find it easier to lay pieces of the peel on the cutting board and to slide a knife between the pith and the peel, similar to how you would de-skin a piece of fish.
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Cut up both Meyer lemons into 8 segments each, and cut each segment crosswise into small triangles. Remove any seeds from the lemons and add to the orange seeds and membranes. Pull all the seeds and membranes from both the oranges and lemons into a square of cheesecloth (at least 4 layers thick) and tie the fabric together with kitchen twine to make a small bag.
(Note: At this point, if you plan to can the marmalade for shelf-stability, then put a small plate in the freezer to chill.)
Place the lemon and orange juices in a medium-sized pot, and add the julienned peels and lemon pieces and the water. Tie the cheesecloth bag to the pot’s handle on one side, making sure that the bag is sitting in the marmalade. As the seeds/membranes cook, the pectin will leach out of the bag and into the marmalade. Bring mixture to a boil and let cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Remove the bag and let sit until cool enough to touch.
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Pour the fruit mixture into a measuring cup and measure how much fruit mixture you have. For each cup of fruit mixture, add 7/8 cup of sugar. (I had 3 cups of fruit, so I added 2 1/4 cup sugar.) Put the sugar and fruit mixture back in the pot. Once the pectin bag is cool, squeeze the bag to get any extra pectin out of the bag.
(Note: At this point, if you plan to can your marmalade, sterilize your glass jars. Wash each jar in hot water, and put the jars on a baking sheet. Put the jars in a 200° fahrenheit oven and let “cook” in oven for 10 minutes.)
Add the pectin to the sugar and fruit mixture. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, and cook until the marmalade reaches a temperature (as measured by a candy thermometer) of 220 – 222° fahrenheit. As an alternative to using a candy thermometer, you can utilize “the wrinkle test.” For the wrinkle test, chill a plate in the freezer while you are prepping and cooking the marmalade so it’s fully chilled when you are ready to test the marmalade. Put a small spoonful of marmalade on the plate, wait 5 seconds, and push the marmalade with your finger (it should be cool from sitting on the plate for those 5 seconds). If the surface of the marmalade wrinkles at all, it’s time to can the marmalade. If the marmalade is runny on the plate and/or doesn’t wrinkle when you push it, then it’s not ready to can; cook it for a few more minutes and try again.
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To process the jars of marmalade, bring a small pan of water to boil and drop in the flat lids. Let them soak in the hot water for 5 minutes to soften the seal. Fill each jar up with marmalade, leaving 1/4 inch space between the lid and the top of the jam. Run a knife around the inside of the jars, to make sure that no air bubbles are sitting between the marmalade and the jar. Wipe the outside of the rims of the jars to make sure that no sticky marmalade will break the seal. Put the lid on the jar, and screw on the ring/band to close the jar. Put the jars in a large pot of boiling water (do not lay them down sideways, they must be processed standing upright) and cover with water such that there is at least 1 inch of water above the tops of the jars. Bring water in pan to boil, and process cans for 10 minutes. Use tongs to get the jars out of the hot water and leave them on the counter to dry.
Listen for the “pop” sound as the jars’ vacuum seal is created. Celebrate by opening a jar even though you just spent upwards of 4 hours making it shelf-stable.
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Now Playing in the Kitchenette: The Cribs / We Share the Same Skies - please to be loving this band with me. trust.
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