We harvested some plums from the neighbour lady. The production;, while not difficult, is always time-consuming. We’ve been doing this for twenty-five years, but this time we just could not get the jam thickness right. It is thinner than we like. We tried all sorts of tricks…but no, it would not thicken. This morning my Bride tried another trick with four of the twelve pots.she added a pinch of sugar and some amount of grams pectin. We re-sterilised the pots and lids and re-filled them with the doctored jam. It is thicker; however, we are not happy. We will let those re-filled pots alone and move on to a new four pots and add more pectin and sugar, then see if that helps. So frustrating, this.
When I did my first Johannesberre batch of jam, my sister-in-law helped me and told me that if I didn't get enough steam coming out then my jam would be runny and I needed to heat it longer. I don't know if that's your issue but, that all I got !!
Annie, yes— we use that technique to dehydrate and thus thicken the cooking jam. We are repotting the jam now and tweeking the mix with sugar and pectin. It seems to be helping now. I appreciate your helpful info tremendously. Cheers.
When I made a gallon of Hawthorn wine I didn't think about pectin. (Hawthorn berries are full of it) In the morning I had a gallon of solid wine
Sjoerd i know that you've been making jam for years, I used to cook the stones with the fruit by putting them in a bag or trying to fish them out afterwards. Boil the jam for 20mins then test it, if it's not set cook for a further 10 mins.
Thanks Loggie. We actually boiled the jam foe 40 mins and it would not get stiff. Finally we re-did the jam and slowly added pectin powder, it is now acceptable. This has never happened before.
Sjoerd that's the trouble with making jam, don't know how long it will take. I know over here can buy preserving sugar, has pectin added but more expensive. It could be that the fruit was over ripe.
Annie— we have that pectin sugar. It is helpful. As for the fruit— about half was not ripe at all. I normally take fruit that is not ripe for the pectin. Well, I just do not know. I hope it was a one-off thing.
