How preserve Blueberry Jam!

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All right, I’m back. All right, today I’m going to show you guys how to can and preserve some homemade blueberry jam that is absolutely to die for. Whipping up all of your favorite recipes. You should know by now that you’re in for a treat. Simply, there’s no other channel where you’d rather be. Simply singful pasta, cakes, and pies. Sing and laugh and even cry. Like and share and hit subscribe. Simply food by Y. All right, you guys. So, let’s go over our ingredients. So, you’re going to need some lemon juice. Now, they say when canning, it’s actually preferred for you to use bottled lemon juice because of how concentrated it is. And the purpose of adding this in is to make it that shelf stable. So, I would definitely just listen to what the folks say. There’s a lot of different websites that you can go on that have a lot of information about um canning, so you know, you can check your resources. I have six lbs of organic frozen blueberries. I These blueberries are absolutely insane. Um I have some vanilla extract, one 1.75 ouncez box of the sure gel. This is the pectin. I have some white granulated sugar. And then I also have some turbanado sugar. I’ll talk about the sugar in a few moments. Let’s get to work. This recipe is so extremely easy to put together. Literally add all of your blueberries directly to your pot. No need to mash them inside of the bowl and then transfer them over. Honey, just put them all directly in the pot. Blueberry juice and all. I like to start off with going in with a potato masher and just giving these a rough little mash before I add in my one packet of pectin. All righty, you guys. So, just to let you know, while I’m mashing these down, I have my temperature on about a two or three. It’s on really, really low at the moment. And this is simply so that it can loosen up the skins on the blueberry to make the mashing a little bit easier. I’m also going to go in with an immersion blender. Now, this is all a matter of preference here. You can leave it like this where you have big big chunks of blueberries. You can completely um use your immersion blender and completely liquefy it. I like to do about a halfway point because I love seeing little bits and pieces of the blueberry in my jam. That’s the reason why I like making jams more so than jellies. So, I’m going to go in now with my immersion blender. Just give this a few blitzes just to kind of smooth it out just a little bit, but I still want to see chunks of the blueberries in it. And as always, make sure you’re being very careful with splashback when using your immersion blender. Now that I’ve gotten this down to the consistency that I like, you can kind of see how like it’s somewhat liquidy, but you’re still seeing some chunks of the blueberry. That’s exactly what I want. So now I’m going to go on ahead and add in the pectin because I want to make sure that this fully dissolves and is fully incorporated before we add in our sugar. Make sure that you are mixing this thoroughly the entire time. Now that I have my pectin completely incorporated, I’m going to go on ahead and bring this up to a boil. Making sure that I am mixing the entire time. Just so you know, if you don’t want to add pectin, you do not have to. Blueberries naturally have a lot of pectin already in it. I add it in as a precautionary measure just so that I can make sure that my jam really sets up the way that I want it to. You can absolutely do it without. There’s plenty of recipes out there, but a long story short, you would just make sure that you would cook it for just a little bit longer so that the natural pectin itself can kind of form. Make sure that you’re mixing the entire time while you’re waiting for this to come up to a boil. And while I’m waiting for this to come up to a boil, I’m going to go on ahead and add in my 1/4 a cup of my lemon juice. This is also going to help activate that pectin in there. So, while I’m waiting for this to come up to a rolling boil, and by rolling boil, that means no matter how much I stir this, it’s still boiling. That’s what you want. So, do not rush this process. All of this is really important to make sure that you have a perfectly set jam. And speaking of the jam setting, let’s talk about the sugar. That is always a thing that a lot of people stress out about when they see home canners making preserves at home. The amount of sugar that goes in. This is what you need to understand when you’re using pectin. It is extremely important that you are looking at the type of pectin that you are using. If you’re using the original box, that is always going to require a lot more sugar in order for your jam to set. If you purchase the original box of Sure Gel and then put it in here and then decide, “Oh, I don’t want to put the amount of sugar that they tell me to put,” you’re going to end up with blueberry syrup. It’s never going to set. So, if you want to make a low sugar or no sugar jam, make sure that you are buying the appropriate box of pectin so that you don’t run into any of those issues. Today, I am making a full sugar recipe. I will definitely be doing other variations where I do low sugar. So, for these six lbs, it does require 8 cups of sugar. Now, the type of sugar that I’m using, I’m using four cups of regular white granulated sugar and then five cups of turbanado cane sugar. Now, you do not have to do that. You can use all white sugar. That’s totally fine. Um, I’m using the turbanado sugar only because I like that it has a slight maple hint to it. Um, so I really enjoy that aspect. So, that’s the reason why I’m using it, but I don’t want to use all turbanado sugar. You don’t want to do that. Um, so I just wanted to make sure that I put that out there so that when you guys see me put in the sugar in a few moments, you’re not having a panic attack. Also, I don’t know about you, but I’m never just sitting down eating one entire thing of jam at one time. does. So, don’t go stressing yourself out. These these are the things that are required when making jams at home. And to be quite frank, if you go to the grocery store, you’re probably going to notice that there’s the exact same amount of sugar and a lot of that jarred stuff, if not even more on top of a bunch of unnecessary added ingredients. At least at home, we know exactly what is going in it. All right, you guys. We are exactly where I want to be. I am stirring this and it is still completely boiling. So, now we’re going to go on ahead and add all of the sugar in at one time. Add it in all at once and give this a good mix. Please be careful if you’ve never worked with sugar like this. When it gets hot, you do not want this splashing up on your hands because it is extremely hot and it can in fact burn you. Make sure that you are mixing the entire time because you’ve added a lot of sugar into this and you do not want your jam to burn. All righty, you guys. Now that all of my sugar is fully dissolved, I’m now waiting for this to come back up to a raging boil one more time. When that happens, I’m then going to set a timer for 1 minute. At that point, I am then going to start to test this to see if it is already starting to set up the way that I would like it to. In order to do that, you can either literally just watch how it falls off of the spoon, or you can place yourself a plate in the freezer, allow that to get nice and cold, and then put a little bit of the jam on the plate. If you’re able to swipe your finger through that jam on that cold plate and it stays separated, that means that your jam is already set. If not, you can allow it to cook a little bit longer, but only do it in 1 minute increments. All right, y’all. This is what we’re looking for. We’re now at the point where I’m able to stir this and it is still completely boiling. I’m now going to set my timer for 1 minute. And if you want to eliminate having a lot of foam coming up inside of your jam, you can add in a tiny little teaspoon of unsalted butter that are kind of eliminated. I’m not really stressed about it today. I’m just going to skim it off before I jar it up. So, I just want to show you guys what this is looking like. You see how this is starting to cling to the spoon just a little bit as it comes off the spoon. That’s what you want. It’s starting to coat the back of the spoon. This is all good signs. So, I’m now going to go on ahead and turn the heat all the way off. And now that the heat has been turned off, we will now go on ahead and add in our 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla Madagascar gradea extract. Just one teaspoon will go a long way. This is six lbs of berries we’re working with, but one teaspoon is more than enough. You do not want to add that in until you’ve turned the heat off because you don’t want to run the risk of burning up the vanilla. This is already hot enough as is. All right, y’all. So, let’s jar it up. As always, you guys know my rule of thumb. Anytime I’m hot packing something, I do not like taking all of the jars out of the hot water at once. I like to just do two at a time so that I can make sure that everything is staying nice and hot. I’m going to carefully ladle in my blueberry jam. Go in and make sure that you’re debubbling everything, getting out any of those little air pockets. Get yourself a paper towel with a little bit of vinegar and make sure that you are going around the edges of these jars. This is not only going to make sure that you get your jars nice and clean so that you get a proper seal, but it’s also your last test just to make sure that there are no chips or cracks on the lid itself. I’m now going to add my lid directly on. Place my ring on fingertip tight. Be very careful because the jars are nice and hot. And I’m going to immediately put these back into my water bath caner. And I’m going to repeat this process. As always, make sure that you are handling these with ease. All right, you guys. All of my jars have been added. As always, put a little splash of vinegar in there to prohibit any, you know, foggess on the outside of the jars themselves. Place the lid on this and wait until this comes up to a raging boil. Once it comes up to a boil, you’re then going to set the timer for this to process based on your elevation. As always, that’s really important to make sure that you check to see what your processing times need to be based on where you are located. So, just letting you guys know, once these pots come up to a ranging boil, I will set the timer for 10 minutes for this to process. Now, because I’m doing two different pots, I will be sure to set two different timers. This larger one here, of course, takes a lot longer for that pot to come up to a raging boil. It is important to note that you do not start your timer until that water is at a raging boil. Another note, you do not have to have this type of water caner here in order to water bath can. Any pot will suffice as long as the the jars can be fully submerged with at least 2 in of water above. And if you put a tea towel in the bottom of the pot or some sort of man-made rack, you can water bath. I had some leftover jam, so I have three quarts inside of this one here. And I just wanted to show you guys, this is a cold plate that I had in the freezer. This is the blueberry jam. And look at this. That, my dears, is how you know that you are going to end up with some beautifully set jam. Once it can do that, you know that you’re good to go. As always, when you’re taking your jars out, make sure that you’re being extremely careful. And also, when the timer goes off, remove the lid, turn off the heat, and allow it to sit in the pan for about 5 minutes before you decide to take it out of the pot. That will allow the jars to kind of cool down just for a few moments. All right, you guys. Now that I have all of my jars out, I’m now going to place a towel over these and allow these to rest for 24 hours undisturbed. Do not take the rings off. Don’t try to adjust them. Just leave them be. And just like that, 24 hours later, I have some handcrafted, perfectly sealed, perfectly set blueberry jam. I mean, isn’t that incredible? It sets absolutely perfectly every single time. I was able to get nine halfpint jars and three um one pint jars. And I always make sure that I remove the rings off of these and then I do my seal test by lifting the jars from the seal. And no matter how big the jar is, you should be able to lift it up by the seal. And even these big ones, as you can see, the jam has set perfectly. I always like to take a soapy rag and wash my jars down before I put the labels on. So that way I can make sure if there’s any food debris on the outside of the jars, everything is sterilized before I go to store it away. But that, my dears, is how I made my homemade blueberry jam. Thanks for tuning in. Talk to y’all later. Bye honey.