Blackcurrant jam

 

Ingredients

600g blackcurrants (strip off the stalks)

~ 400g white caster or granulated sugar

juice of ½ a lemon

Method

Sterilise your jars (I do mine in microwave or dishwasher). 

Tip the blackcurrants into a heavy-based saucepan with about 100ml of water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 mins until the fruit has broken down to a chunky pulp. Leave to cool slightly.

You now have 2 options. For a smooth jelly-style jam, squash the fruit through a sieve into a bowl. If you prefer your jam chunky and seeded, leave the pulp as it is. Whether it's strained or unstrained, weigh the fruit pulp and then add 400g of sugar to every 500g of pulp, then tip pulp back in the saucepan.

Pour in the lemon juice then heat gently, stirring, to dissolve the sugar completely. Turn up the heat, then boil hard for about 10 mins or until it reaches 105C on a cooking thermometer (the setting point evidently). If you don’t have a cooking thermometer, put a saucer in the freezer. You all know this but to test for setting point, spoon a little jam onto a cold saucer. After a couple of mins gently push your finger through the jam – if the surface wrinkles, it's ready. If not, return to the boil for 2 mins, then re-test.

Take off the heat and skim off any froth with a slotted spoon. Cool for 10-15 mins. Stir gently to distribute the fruit, then ladle into sterilised jars. Keeps for 6 months in a cool dry cupboard – at least.

Chook’s note: Adjust the quantities up or down depending on the amount of fruit you have,  My fruit all had the remnants of the flowers attached and I thought that I would perhaps strain the pulp and make jelly rather than have floaties but the dead petal remains disintegrated leaving a glorious jewel-like textured potful.

The flavour is so worth the small amount of time spent cooking these wee berries. The colour is simply stunning.

I use this h=jam as the base for a gastrique *see elsewhere.