Tuesday 24 September 2013

In my kitchen Part 2 - making jampurelly

Welcome to my new follower Virginia via Bloglovin.

Having picked my brambles and obtained a full carrier bag of windfall cooking apples, we set about making some jelly. Won't go into details about how to do it as there are plenty of tutorials on-line.

However, what I usually make afterwards is jampurelly© - jam made from the purée leftover from making jelly! It has got to have a name of some sort hasn't it and this is the one I came up with. I'm sure you could find a different name - all sorts of things spring to mind!

Once you have made your jelly, put it into jars and cleaned your pan, you are ready to start. What, you normally throw yours away?

Here it is ready to begin.
If you don't possess a moulin food mill, you will have to do this the hard way. I used a metal sieve and pushed the fruit purée through with a metal spoon. It takes a bit of time but is worth it.
Stop every now and then and use a blunt edged knife or silicone paddle scraper, to scrape off the refined purée from under the sieve into a wide necked jug.
Carry on until you have got as much pushed through as you can, then throw the useless bits into your food/compost bin.

All in all, I managed to get 1 pint of refined purée.To this I added 1 medium grated cooking apple, juice of 1 lemon (or 2 - 3 tablespoons bottled stuff), 1 teaspoon mixed spice and 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon.
After stirring it well, it went into a heavy bottomed pan (rather than my jam pan as it was too large for such a small amount of purée) with 1 lb white sugar. (Equal purée to sugar).

You need to remember that you are not making jam that starts off as a semi-liquid substance. This starts off quite thick and gets thicker very quickly and has a tendency to SPIT AT YOU!
I protected myself using a large frying splatter guard. If you don't have one of those, you need to find something that allows steam to escape but not the contents. The picture below is from another batch hence the difference in colour!


It could be a very large metal/glass lid or old tea towel that partially covers the main part of the pan closest to you. Find what works for you. DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS WITHOUT PROTECTION!

Rather than bringing the contents to a boil, bring them to a simmer and allow it to simmer in a burping kind of fashion, for 20 - 25 minutes until it has thickened by reducing. There are no tests for this unlike jam. It is very reminiscent of making chutney. You need it to reduce it but not let it stick!

This stage is a little bit of trial and error but the timing was about right for me for this amount. I then carefully placed it into hot jars and sealed immediately. Once cooled, I could turn it on its side without any signs of movement.

This seems to last as long as jam. However, due to the grated apple which has not dissolved as much as I had hoped, we will use it sooner rather than later. You can leave out the apple if you wish.

Herewith some finished photographs. The top one has bramble and apple jelly on the left and apple and rose hip on the right.
I also made some apple, rose hip, orange jampurelly©  

The rose hips (which had been chopped up and tied in a double thickness of muslin) were squeezed into a jug and the apple purée treated as above. To this mixture I added the zest of one orange plus its juice and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.
I only managed to get 3/4 pint of purée so only added 3/4 lb sugar and cooked it as above. Here they are. The smell of it cooking was fantastic, very zesty.
Now, who wouldn't want to receive something like that as a gift:







6 comments:

  1. I usually do something like this too. It is more effort but you get more preserves in store (and for presents) just for the cost of the sugar. I like your name, though : )

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    1. I am always surprised at how much more preserve I get compared to the original jelly.

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  2. wonderful! You deserve recognition for your thrifty efforts!!!

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  3. This this looks very tasty indeed. Can I pick your brains DC? I notice that you often welcome new followers from Bloglovin. When I first started with Bloglovin I was able to see a list of who we're my followers, but now I only see two names and something like 35 anonymous followers. I know most of them are not because at first I could see they were already following me on Blogger. I just wonder how I can welcome them if I do t know who they are. There are several new names commenting and guess these are new followers. However they may not be following but just popped over from another post and then I'd look silly welcoming them if they're are not followers. Any Ideas would be welcome. Thanks
    Patricia x

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  4. New Bloglovin followers arrive via my blog email account. Whilst I am still signed into my blog, I go to google mail and either my mail opens up or I have to sign into it. It says so and so is now following you from Bloglovin. It is the only time you know who they are (I keep them all in a folder in my email so I remember who they are). After that, on Bloglovin, they just become anonymous followers so this is the only way to know who they are. I can't remember when I set up Bloglovin whether I had to tick for emails alerts regarding new followers or whether it was automatic! Hope that helps. I always check my blog email as sometimes people send emails (those that know it).

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