Jammin’ & Cannin’: Raspberry Jam Edition

You guys, I accidentally made something delicious.

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It was an accident because I planned to pickle things over the weekend. Pickle. Not jam. But lo-and-behold my dude and I found ourselves passing a U-pick raspberry farm on our way home from breakfast Sunday morning, and, well, one thing led to another…

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First of all, we’d been at a wedding the night before, and there was a some foot-gear logistics that got messed up, and let’s just say neither of us left the house in the morning prepared to pick a few quarts of raspberries. But that didn’t stop us.

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And since it was a wet morning, the farmer told us we needed to process or freeze them stat, or they would start to mold. So I did a little of both…

This jam recipe had only two ingredients, and was cooked and canned in an hour. Here it is… are you ready for it?

Ingredients

  • Raspberries
  • Sugar

That’s it.

It should be a 1-to-1 ratio of sugar to berries, but I used 8 cups of raspberries and closer to 7 cups of sugar because I ran out, and it was still plenty sweet. I heard that you should heat up the sugar in a 250-degree oven for 5-10 minutes first because it makes it will dissolve more evenly.

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While that was heating I put the berries on in a large pot to boil, mashing as they heated up…

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I let them boil for a minute, then dumped in the sugar and stirred (a lot). Brought everything back up to a boil for about 5 minutes–until it passed the “spoon test”, which is basically dipping a cool spoon in and seeing when the mixture coats the spoon and drips off slowly–and then took it off the heat.

At this point I’ve got my canning assembly line down to a science…

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This made a little over 6 jam jars.

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I processed them for 5 minutes, except for the one that went immediately in the fridge so I could do this…

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Super sweet and tangy. Maybe the best thing I’ve canned yet!

7 Responses

  1. Love the shoes. Seriously. He has great taste in foot-wear.

    Have not been brave enough for canning yet. Am freezing all the produce as it comes off and will be making batches of sauce.

  2. You know, I hate to cook, but I freaking love to can. I just find the whole process fascinating and soothing. I also think that the little glass rows of food on my shelves are beautiful. Yeah, we’ve all got issues.

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