People always tell me how much they love homemade jam, but most of those people have never attempted to make it themselves. They've just lucked out somewhere and got the opportunity to taste someone else's. Nobody ever wants to believe me that it's one of the easiest "do-it-yourself" cooking projects you could do. Here is my super easy, very yummy raspberry jam recipe.
I have tried the cooked version as well as the no-cook freezer version of this jam and they are both really good and easy, but Rod and I both prefer the freezer version. It keeps more of the bright red color and the flavor is fresher in my opinion.
You will need:
* large stainless steel bowl or pot
* masher and stirring spoon
* sieve (for seedless jam)
* 6 cups fresh or frozen raspberries
* 2 tbsp. lemon juice (from a bottle or freshly squeezed)
* about 2 - 2 1/2 cups sugar
* pectin (read instructions on box)
Step 1: Mash the raspberries until they turn into a nice and mushy pulp.
(sorry, I didn't get a picture of it looking nice and mushy before I added the sugar)
Step 2: (optional) Take some or all (depending on how many seeds you want to get rid of) of the pulp and in layers squish it through the sieve. Make sure you get as much of the juice squeezed out of the pulp as you possibly can. Then discard the pulp and seeds that are left over in the sieve and do another layer, until you have separated as much of the juice from the seeds/pulp as you want. Its ok to leave some of the pulp and seeds in, its really just preference as to how much you remove if any. Rod likes having seeds in his jam, I prefer none. (I didn't remove the seeds this time around so I have no pictures of this step)
Step 3: Time for the lemon and sugar! It's really up to you how much you want to add. The lemon juice helps bring out the flavors of the berries and I found that 2 tbsp. was perfect for my taste. You can kind of taste a lemony flavor but it mostly tastes like really good raspberries! I would say taste the raspberry juice before adding any sugar, and then start adding it in 1/4 or 1/2 cup amounts. Most jam recipes will call for more cups of sugar then fruit and that just seems wrong to me. Just keep adding sugar and tasting the jam until you think it's sweet enough. For me that was about 2 cups. Stir the jam until all the sugar is dissolved and the juices start looking clear.
Step 4: Follow the directions on the box or paper insert for the pectin. Once you have prepared the pectin as per directions (pretty much adding it to water and bringing it to a boil), stir it into the jam and keep stirring for 3 min.
Your jam should look like this!!
Step 5: This jam is stored in the freezer, so you can pour it into plastic containers or even glass jars. I use jars because I have a lot of them! And that's it!! It took me about 20 min from start to finish the other day, and now I have three beautiful jars of yummy, fresh raspberry jam. (somehow on my monitor the color of the jam looks more like pizza sauce, but I promise in real life it's the perfect red color for raspberry jam!)
I hope this inspires someone to try making they're own jam! I use this same recipe for strawberry jam with amazing results! (just skip over the seed removal step entirely) Oh, and we store one jar in the fridge to use because it gets pretty thick in the freezer. The more sugar you add the more runny it will stay in the freezer.
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