canning jams Archives - Wild Blueberries

Jam: Winter’s Taste of Summer Relies on Frozen

Fruit jams are sometimes referred to as “summer in a jar”, and no wonder. Jam is fruit in the extreme, providing a perfect taste bud boost when spring is still several long weeks away. Even those who didn’t share in an annual canning ritual during the summer months can take part – anyone can cook up this tasty treat in the winter as easily as they can in July. That was certainly the view of Allison Carroll Duffy when she shared her recipe for Blueberry Vanilla Jam on Maine’s 207 recently. She reminded us in no uncertain terms that frozen wild blueberries are the solution to winter jam making.

“Since it’s winter, I’ve been making this recipe with frozen berries,” said Duffy, “and you know what? I actually prefer using frozen at this time of year, as I can use locally-grown [or “wild”] berries.” Duffy’s comment serves as a perfect reminder of the advantages that frozen affords us. Convenient, loved by bakers, chefs, and home cooks, available year round in the frozen food section, and just as nutritious and delicious as fresh, frozen helps us adds important cups of fruit to our daily nutritional needs, all while providing a taste of a local summer favorite. The utter ease of availability of frozen wild blueberries means there is nothing standing in our way of making homemade jam this month – or any month – and experiencing the superior taste and nutrition of wild blueberries.

Keeping jam on hand is a must in Duffy’s household – she finds the sweet fruit taste of homemade jam irresistible. Besides its role as a foil for toast, jam lovers like theirs for lunch in classic PB & J(am), as a sweet topper for ice cream, in yogurt, or with cottage cheese. The unique sweet and tart flavor of wild blueberries are a classic for fruit jams – unsurpassed in flavor and color – especially when it’s used in small, warmed amounts whisked into salad dressings or glazes for chicken or meats, or for dolloping over goat cheese for a tasty hors d’oeuvre.

Wild blueberry jam is also a pantry staple for bakers – Blueberry Jam Sandwich Cookies come to mind. Even Medina County Life has the right idea, miles away from the wild blueberry harvest, in Ohio: they suggest frozen blueberry jam as the complement to everything from pound cake to sliced bananas. Well done!

Jam’s Jarring Health Benefits

Homemade wild blueberry jam is a sweet treat with broad appeal, but it offers big benefits when it’s made at home. Making jam helps side-step the extra sugar, calories, and preservatives that can run high in many supermarket jams. Made with whole ingredients, homemade jam helps us feel good about enjoying its many health advantages without the health hazards.

Jam’s biggest advantage is the main ingredient, wild blueberries. Wild blues have powerful antioxidant properties that support our disease prevention efforts, and since we tend to eat fewer cups of fruits and veggies this time of year, now is when we need good-for-us food the most. When we enjoy any half cup of wild blueberries, we’re giving the nod to nutrition by leaving less room for foods that satisfy our sweet tooth but offer empty calories. And just like frozen berries, jam is there to be used whenever we please: it stores well in the freezer for several months and will last in the fridge for 2 to 3 weeks.

Now that you are jam savvy, what’s stopping your from cooking up a jar of summer sweetness while the snow flies? You’re bound to find it a welcome taste of summer this season!

Looking for more jam recipe ideas? Find other ways to enjoy this Summer Fruit Spin-off all winter. You can also find out more about Allison Caroll Duffy’s classes and workshops on home canning and other methods of food preservation at CanningCraft.com.

Fruit Forward: Jam is Summer’s Fruit Spin-Off

Workshops, Recipes & Our Wild Blueberry Lemon Jam

Just as night follows day, a deluge of fresh fruits can sometimes lead to jam. Jam is one of summer food’s wonderful spin-offs. When the luxury of copious amounts of fruit surrounds us, jam is a way to utilize our beautiful excess. It provides us with a gift for friends and neighbors and a way to recall summer’s bounty when it’s darker and colder.

We’ve discussed jam’s advantages and its caveats in a previous post (Jam-tastic! from June 2011). While its deliciousness is undisputed, it’s true that some nutrients are lost when berries turn to jams. According to Livestrong.com, boiling that occurs in the process of canning changes fruits’ enzymes, reducing its vitamins by as much as one-half to one-third. Vitamins possess the antioxidant activity that fruits like wild blueberries, for example, are famous for.

Dr. Daniel Nadeau recently pointed out that fruits like blueberries are best eaten raw or frozen to take full advantage of their disease-preventing power. Still, jam has many advantages for the healthy eater. It has half the calories of butter, which it is often substituted for, and it is low in cholesterol. And, by boiling and canning fruits yourself, you avoid processed foods with added sugar and preservatives while passing along a respectable amount of nutrient content. Did we also mention it is famously palate-pleasing? It lends a fruit forward essence to toast, cheese, crackers, yogurt – even coffee.*

Buried in Berries? Start Here

Put your fresh fruit where your mouth is and get hands-on with summer’s crop of wild blueberries. Two hands-on workshops, sponsored by the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, provide a practical lesson on making low-sugar blueberry jam and low-sugar blueberry spice jam for those who live in southern Maine. Both workshops will be taught by master food preserver Kate McCarty and will be held at 75 Clearwater Drive in Falmouth at a cost of $10. The Blueberry Jam Workshop will be held 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Aug. 2; the Blueberry Spice Workshop will be on Aug. 11. For more information or to register, call 781-6099 or e-mail [email protected].

Jam Tomorrow, Jam Today

When the White Queen told Alice that there would be jam yesterday and jam tomorrow but never jam today, it’s no wonder the poor girl was confused. We can relate: sometimes it seems the ever-unreachable treat will never come. It makes jam the perfect object lesson when it comes to the indulgences of summer – the promise of a little now and a little later is infinitely more digestible.

Make today’s summer tastes last until tomorrow by getting creative with your jams. Huff Post recommends a few jam recipes to inspire you. Their Mixed Berry Jam allows a mélange of summer’s berries for even bigger berry taste – the result is the “ultimate” jam. With Simplest Rhubarb Jam you won’t let one of the season’s most popular fruits go unjarred. This jam makes a luscious condiment for cheese, for example. Huff also recommends putting Fresh Fruit Butter into your repertoire. Fruit butter – for which wild blueberries are a perfect choice – doesn’t use pectin and is thick and sticky for when you’d rather smear than dollop.

Jam Don’t Shake Like That

Jam’s counterpart, jelly, is usually known for being made from an ingredient’s juice or essence rather than its crushed whole. Blueberry harvest season is a perfect opportunity to join two favored flavors in jelly form. Wild blueberries and hot peppers pop when paired – they work so well together that you’ll want this combo in everything from meats to appetizers. This Blueberry Pepper Jelly recipe is from Lauri Jon Bennett, who promises that you can jar your jams and jellies without buying lots of expensive canning equipment. (She improvises by using rubber bands wrapped around kitchen tongs to create a jar lifter.) She also offers up a recipe for “addictive” Blackberry Jam with Lemon Zest or her Peach Jam with Lemon Thyme and Almonds for some lip-smacking seasonal zing.

If even a moderate jarring operation isn’t for you, you can still enjoy jam with your bounty of blues. Use them in this easy Wild Blueberry Lemon Jam from the wildblueberries.com recipe bank that requires only jars and a boiling water canner. Waffles have never been this mouth-watering. It weighs in at 34 calories per tablespoon.

Prefer to make your own pectin? Using homemade pectin means you’re making completely natural preserves. Learn about making your own pectin for jams and jellies from pickyourown.org.

*Have a unique use for jams and jellies? Let us know by leaving a comment. We’ll use the best in our Best of Fresh Blues list!

Top photo: Blueberry Jam

by Lori L. Stalteri

Jam-tastic!

Are Spreadable Servings Too Good to Be True?

Photo by oksidorIt’s officially summer, and if you’ve been thinking traffic jam, start thinking of a tastier, less stressful kind of jam – the kind that uses wild blueberries, raspberries, apricots, even cherries to spreadable, delicious effect.

After all, jam is really spreadable fruit, and potentially, one of the tastier ways to get a serving. But while the delicious fruits of summer are this food’s main ingredient, jam does present some hidden health dilemmas. It’s a valid question: is eating jam as a fruit serving cheating?

Getting the Best of Jam

Before we fully embrace jams, spreads, jellies and other preserves as a fruit serving boon to meet the fruit-and-vegetable-heavy requirements of our new MyPlate nutritional guidelines, keep in mind that sugar is the edible albatross of jam.

Jams are, generally speaking, loaded down with sugar, especially if they are from the grocery store shelf. Jams can be highly processed and include excess high fructose corn syrup, and they can be high in calories as well. Also, cooking fruit in the process of making jams and preserves can accelerate the loss of vitamins, eroding what was originally a nutritional powerhouse.

How can all this fruit, the cornerstone of healthy eating and disease prevention, take such an evil turn when it turns to mush? It doesn’t have to. While there are good reasons to remain cautious when it comes to jam intake, there are also many advantages to embracing pulverized produce as a topping for your scone, toast, yogurt or in a classic PB&J.

Jams come with concerns, like any other food, but if your goal is to eat widely and colorfully, it belongs on your plate, and it can enhance your healthy eating goals – particularly if you are up for a little preparation in your own kitchen.

Jam’s advantages:

It boosts energy. The sugars are perfect for snacking or adding to breakfast items for a quick oomph.
It has half the calories of butter as a topper, and is low in cholesterol.
It still has all the benefits of fruit, most notably, heart healthy, cancer fighting antioxidant power. It aids is maintaining healthy blood pressure, and when you make it yourself, it’s a concentrated wallop of nutrition.
It tastes amazing. Sweet and savory, and full of whole fruit pieces, jams and jellies are like candy without the empty calories.
It’s and ideal way to preserve the tastes of the season when the berries start flowing, for days later or months later.
If you are picking the fruit yourself to turn into jam, you can capture it when it’s fully ripe for the best nutritional value.

Enjoy Jam, Maintain Your Health

Low sugar fruit preserves are available on the store shelf, but an alternative to enjoying all the wonders of fruit in jam form without the high sugar content and preservatives is to make it yourself.

You can learn how to can (many communities offer canning classes this time of year) or go the simple route and mash fresh-picked fruit, add a little cinnamon, lemon and a dash of sugar, and spread. If you’ve got a hankering for real blueberry jam and you’re sitting on a few pints of blueberries from a local farm, for instance, here’s a simple way to create it that is ideal for the canning-phobic. We’ve used the principles of blueberry jam making from Real Simple:

Easy Wild Blueberry Jam

For 3 cups of blueberry jam, use 5 cups of wild blueberries, ½ cup of sugar, 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice and ¼ teaspoon of kosher salt.

Combine and mash with a potato masher, cook over medium-high heat for 18-25 minutes and refrigerate.

You can also use frozen (any time of year): substitute two 10 ounce bags, and cook them for 2-3 minutes before mashing, then reduce the cooking time by the same.

Glazes: It’s All About the Grill

When is a fruit not fruit? When it’s a jam, jelly, sauce or glaze, of course, perfectly prepared to enliven barbecue and provide the zing to meats and other summer grilling items. Shannon Bissonnette has a handle on the full glazing picture. She is the owner and operator of Better Than Average Jams, Jellies and Sauces located in Mechanic Falls, Maine, and her specialty is fruit completely transformed, made from local ingredients that showcase unique flavors for spreading on breads or on BBQ.

Embrace the flavor of evolved fruit: add Raspberry Jalapeno Jam, Zesty Apple BBQ Glaze, or Blueberry Chipotle Stout BBQ Sauce to your outdoor grilling repertoire! You can read more about Shannon here (scroll down for the recipes).

Summer Jam: Spread the Love

Learn about preserving, and find organic blueberry jam recipes at Peace & Plenty Farm.

Remember that tomatoes benefit nutritionally from cooking! Try this Spicy Tomato Jam recipe.

Make a classic Strawberry Jam, or get the skinny on other classic combos such as Blueberry Rhubarb Jam on the ifood TV network.

The University of Maine Cooperative Extension has tips on making wild blueberry jam for preserving, among other ways to use and preserve Maine foods, such as fiddleheads.