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Rhubarb Orange Jam

Caitlin 5 Comments

I’ve been itching to can with the warm weather we’ve been having, but there is not too much in season quite yet. One thing that is ready to go though is rhubarb! So I cracked open my Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, looked up rhubarb in the glossary and found this rhubarb orange jam recipe. I went full sugar for this recipe, since rhubarb and orange sounded like quite the tart combination, but you rhubarb lovers are welcome to pick up a box of low sugar pectin if you so desire. It’s really quite a delicious combination of sweet and tart. I enjoyed my little bit of leftovers on an English muffin.

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This recipe yields 7 half pints.

Ingredients:
2 oranges
5 cups finely chopped rhubarb
1 package fruit pectin
6 cups sugar

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Here’s how it’s done. This is a nice and easy pectin jam, and dang is it delicious!

First prepare your canner, jars, and lids. This recipe is a quick one.

Finely chop the rhubarb. Peel one half of one of the oranges and chop the peel finely. Juice the two oranges and measure the juice. You want at least a full cup, so if you don’t have quite enough top it off with a bit of water.

Combine the orange juice, rhubarb and pectin in a large pot. Stir to dissolve the pectin.

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Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring frequently. Once at a full boil add the sugar all at once. I let it boil a minute or two before adding the sugar, just to get the rhubarb nice and soft.

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Bring the mixture back to a full boil. Stir constantly to prevent burning. Once at a full boil, time one minute of hard boiling. Remove from heat.

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Fill the jars, leaving a quarter inch head space. Wipe the rims, apply the lids, and tighten the bands finger tip tight. Place the full jars in the canner, covered by at least one inch of water. Bring to a full rolling boil and process for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, remove the canner lid, wait 5 minutes and remove the jars to a hot pad or towel.

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Isn’t that a gorgeous jam!?

Let the jars cool 12-24 hours, check the seals, remove the bands, label and store. This jam is delicious and so easy! If you have the canning itch too, make it, you won’t regret it.

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Cherry Marmalade

Caitlin Leave a comment

The next recipe for my Ball canning challenge was cherry marmalade, which we actually made while the Seville Orange Marmalade was cooking down. I realize it’s not cherry season, but I had some in the freezer already pitted that I had intended on making into cherry pie. However, they’d been there all winter and since it was a marmalade kind of day I thought, heck, let’s make another one! This one is page 102 in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.

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Ingredients:
2/3 cup chopped seeded orange (peeled)
4 cups pitted sweet cherries
4 tbsp lemon juice
3.5 cups granulated sugar

Here’s how we made it:

In a large pot combine the cherries, orange and lemon juice. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium high, then reduce the heat, cover and maintain a boil, stirring often. Boil for 20 minutes or so until the peels are softening and the cherries are breaking down a bit.

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After 20 minutes add the sugar, maintaining a boil. Continue to boil hard, stirring frequently for about 30 minutes, until gel stage is reached.

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Fill the hot jars leaving a quarter inch headspace. Remove bubbles, wipe the rim, apply the lids and tighten the bands finger tip tight. Place the jars in the canner covered by at least 1-2 inches of water. Bring to a full rolling boil and process for 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes, turn off the heat, remove the canner lid, wait 5 minutes and remove the jars to a hot pad or towel. Ping, ping, ping – marmalade! Wait 12-24 hours, check the seals, remove the bands, wipe, label and store. Deeeeeelish!

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Seville Orange Marmalade

Caitlin 1 Comment

OK – so if you read my post on Friday, you know about the epic challenge I am undertaking – that I plan to can my way through the entire Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. So here is my first post for that challenge, page 97, my first traditional marmalade.

Ingredients:
2 1/4 lbs Oranges
2 Clementine oranges
2 lemons
12.5 cups hot water
11.5 cups sugar
1/3 cup brandy (optional)

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Here’s how we made it:

We didn’t 100% follow Ball on how to do step 1 just because we wanted really thin slices of peel, so you can decide which method you prefer. We peeled strips off the oranges with a potato peeler, then peeled off the rest of the peel and juiced them in an electric juicer, reserving the juice. The rest of the peel/rind, seeds and pulp goes into a cheesecloth bag. The other way you can do it is by halving your oranges and lemons and squeezing the juices out into a cheesecloth lined bowl. Then scoop out all the rest of the pulp and seeds into the cheesecloth. If you like the orange slices thick then no problem, follow Ball and now slice those peels as thin as you like them. We just wanted really thin slices. Whichever way you do it, reserve the juices, and tie the pulp, peel and seeds up in a cheesecloth bag.

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Combine the juices, peel slices, pulp sack and hot water in a large pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and continue to boil gently. The goal is to get the peel nice and soft, and reduce the total volume by nearly a half. This will take about 1.5-2 hours.

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After the hour and a half or so you’ll remove the cheesecloth bag. Try and squeeze it out pretty well back into the pot, or set it in a strainer so you can add those tasty juices back. At this point you want to check that you have pretty close to 10 cups of liquid remaining. If you have more left (like we did) this can affect the quality of your set. So if you are still well over 10 cups you can either discard some or let it boil down a little longer.

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Time to prepare the canner, jars and lids. This recipe will yield 11-12 half pints.

Bring your juice back up to a boil, stirring constantly. Slowly add in the sugar. Maintain a hard boil for 15 minutes or so while stirring occasionally, until gel stage is reached. Once it reaches gel you can add the brandy if you are using it.

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Fill the hot jars with marmalade, leaving a 1/4 inch head space. Wipe the rim, apply the lid, and tighten the band finger tip tight.

As you can maybe tell, our marmalade was a little thinner than it should have been. I’m pretty sure this is due to us not making sure we had 10 cups of liquid, so definitely don’t skip that step. It also did set more and more throughout the week, so if it’s not perfect at first don’t panic.

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Place the jars in the canner covered by at least 1-2 inches of water. Bring to a full rolling boil and process for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes, remove the canner lid, wait 5 minutes, and remove the jars onto a hot pad or towel. After 12-24 hours when they have cooled, check the seals, remove the bands, wipe the jars, label and store. Wait a few weeks to eat them for the best set.

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