Just jammin’

I’ve preserved seasonal fruit and vegetables in various ways with ferments, pickles, chutneys and curds over the years, but for some strange reason I’ve never really been a jam maker.

I don’t know why. We eat a lot of jam and marmalade, mainly at breakfast time, and whenever I’ve been gifted a homemade jar it’s always been fresher and more vibrant than factory-made. I’ve often promised myself that one day I’ll give it a good college try.

That time has come.

Faced with a large bag of croft rhubarb and limited freezer space, I was determined not to waste it. I rifled around in the pantry and found a kilo bag of sugar and a small tub of pectin.

There are many rhubarb jam recipes out there but I didn’t want to try anything complicated or lengthy with the overnight sugaring processes that some of them have, so I used a BBC Good Food recipe by Sarah Cook that looked simple and unfussy.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/rhubarb-vanilla-jam

I always tinker, I’m afraid. I’d eaten rhubarb jam with added orange zest somewhere in the past and loved it, so I decided to zest an orange and add it to the recipe. It’s a great addition.

I don’t have a jam pan so I just used a large saucepan, and I don’t have a sugar thermometer either, but a cold saucer and the wrinkle test stood me in good stead.

Soon the fruit was bubbling away in the pan, filling the kitchen with the most delicious aromas. I’m a rhubarb head at the best of times so this was fabulous.

I’d been saving some pretty cut glass jars for a project exactly like this one, so I washed and put them into the oven to sterilise them whilst I got on with preparing the jam.

After a short rolling boil the rhubarb softened and released its juices most satisfyingly and the mixture started to look like jam. I added a knob of butter to control the froth and before I knew it I was ladling the hot jam into the jars.

They’re sitting there on a pantry shelf like little jewelled pink pots of promise. I could hardly wait for breakfast this morning to give it a try.

The first mouthful was an absolute delight. Sharp and sweet with a zesty depth from the orange, I rather overdid the slathering-onto my breakfast bread as it was so moreish.

I can see that I’ll have to make a second batch whilst there’s still good rhubarb about.