I've been on a streak of pressure canning lately but decided to try something sweet the other day instead.
I followed the recipe to a T, but my marmalade is completely liquid. I am hoping to reprocess with some pectin later in the week since they're safely sealed and can wait a little, but I wanna make sure to do it right.
can anyone suggest their best troubleshooting for adding pectin and reprocessing syrupy marmalade? this recipe was a lot of work and I just want to get it right because I can't use 12 half pints of pure syrup. maybe if it was just one but it's not a usable product to me right now.
by Futurepharma91
5 Comments
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Info: Your post says you’re on a streak of pressure canning, but also says you followed this recipe to a T *(and I’m pretty sure this one is for waterbath)*
Did you pressure can these?
Why go through the hassle of reprocessing? If they are shelf stable, keep as is.
When you open them, add your thickening agent (cornstarch?) and keep for that week in the fridge. These are versatile for syrups and for spreads.
That separation is pretty cool to see.
As you’ve already guessed you probably didn’t have enough pectin or didn’t boil enough of the water out when processing it.
I do know marmalades often rely on the natural pectin in citrus to set but I dislike recipes without added commerical pectin because they’re time consuming and more likely to fail. Natural pectin recipes must reach the 220 degree F to set, if you didn’t reach it it won’t set. Alot of recipes say 15/20 minutes but my experince is it’s 30-45 minutes at a minimum. So if you followed the recipe and cooked for 15 minutes it’s very possible it didn’t come to temp. It’s also possible though as you said in comment you may have had not enough pectin.
Nchfp has a guide for re-processing jam/jelly that didn’t set. It includes links for testing that the jam will set (such as the spoon test). I’ve reprocessed grape jelly and its turned out fine but it ended up a little more stiff then it normally does. I doubt most people would notice the difference though.
https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/make-jam-jelly/jams-jellies-general-information/remaking-soft-jellies/
Do you have access to Pomona’s perfect pectin? With that you would not have to divide the batch. I have made giant batches with that stuff. They’re friendly on the phone and will talk you through it. I guess what happened is you didn’t boil it long enough before processing so it wasn’t truly a jam yet. And you could still do that. But if you wanted to use pectin I would use the pomonas kind. It’s super flexible and easy to use. You can make no sugar jams with it so it doesn’t matter what the the ratio of pectin to sugar is.