What else would i rather be doing on a Monday afternoon than jamming plums for 3 plus hours? Lots of things, actually but i know i’ll be thanking my exhausted self while i dine on Summer fresh jam this Winter. I’ve now jammed 3 different batches of 2 kinds of plums, all foraged from over the fence right here in my apartment complex. Can’t beat free fruit, even if you have to spend $10 or so on more jars, jar lids and some honey. All but the last few plums we picked were NOT free stone, which made the cutting and seeding portion of jamming a looooong and arduous process. The plums were super sour and majorly juicy, making them great candidates for not too sweet jam, perfect for slathering with melted butter on honey wheat toast. Yum.
Plum Jam #1 – makes about 10 half pints
- 5 pounds teeny purple plums, not freestone (weighed after the pits were removed)
- 3 cups sugar
- splash lemon juice
- 1.25 packages low sugar pectin
- Add lemon to fruit and puree with an immersion blender (or in a food processor in batches)
- Cook while adding pectin and 1 cup sugar
- Bring to a boil
- Add rest of the sugar
- Bring to a boil again and boil for at least one minute
- Remove from heat and process 10 minutes (recipe adapted from the Ball Blue Book)
Plum Jam #2 – makes about 8 half pints
- 8 cups pureed sour golden plums, not freestone, pits removed
- 1 cup honey
- 4 teaspoons each calcium water and Pomona Pectin (the calcium water comes in the Pomona package)
- 1 sad, green habanero pepper: use an orange ripened habanero if you can get it!
- Mix calcium water with pureed fruit in a large pot/pan
- Mix pectin with honey in a separate container
- Bring to a boil and add sweetener/pectin mixture, stirring really well for 2 minutes until dissolved
- Bring to a boil again
- Remove from heat and process 10 minutes
Plum Jam #3 – makes about 4 half pints
- 4 cups pureed golden plums, not freestone, pits removed
- 3/4 – 1 cup sugar
- Several dashes pumpkin pie spice (or cardamom/cloves/cinnamon/ginger) about 1/5 teaspoon
- Same process as plum jam #2
All the jars pinged nicely, so i think i’m set. We’ve been eating from the first recipe and are really enjoying it. I also made a batch of spicy plum sauce from the recipe in the Ball Blue Book that turned out nicely, but not very spicy. I’d add a lot more pepper if i did that again – it makes a great bbq sauce, though, especially with rabbit.
After all that jamming, i need a nap! How about you? Do you love jamming/canning the Summer harvest, or is it kind of a chore you’d rather let someone else do? I’m on the fence. 😉
PS – We scoped out a bunch of pear trees to glean from this Fall, so leave me a comment with your favorite pear recipe, canned or baked, for me to try!
Hot pepper tends to become more pronounced with time. I had the same thought for my salsa a couple years ago, but then by spring it was damn near un-edible it was so hot!
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I’ve become rather passionate about jam making. I never really saw myself getting into it before this summer. I’ve been thinking about plum jam all week.
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Nothing is mentioned about the peels – are they removed or mixed in?
Thanks for the question, Karen: if i was to remove the peels of these plums, there’d be nothing left! You can see what the plums looked like in this post, and as you can see the peel is very thin. It is a BIT bitter and more sour than the fruit – but not bad and i like the sour. SO for these recipes, i simply cut in half, picked out the pits (resulting in a very sore thumb) and tossed the whole fruit, with peel in. I use an immersion blender to blend them fine – so there are no real peel “chunks”. hope that helps! Thanks for reading.
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