Have you ever finished a batch of jam, and then tasted it and been disappointed? Like you can’t really taste the fruit flavor under all the sweetness? It’s happened to me more times than I care to remember. But last year I made my first ever batch of black currant jam and it was perhaps the best jam I’d ever eaten. So much flavor! After 20 years of jam making, I finally realized the totally obvious truth that the best jam starts with the worst fruit.
Well, not the worst exactly. But to make flavorful jam, the fruit needs to be very strong flavored and very tart. If it tastes delicious eaten out of hand, it is likely too sweet to make fantastic jam. Not to knock strawberry jam, good in it’s own sweet way, but from now on I’m saving my strawberries for shortcake and using the less delectable fruits to make delectable jam.
Of course, you can always use less sugar to make your jam less sweet. Next month I will be offering a beginner’s preserving class and we’ll learn how to make jam using Pomona’s Pectin. Unlike the standard finicky Sure-Jell, with Pomona’s you can decide how much sweetener you want to use. When I first started using Pomona’s, I cut the sugar to less than half of the usual and I discovered the hard way that jam without enough sugar is just fruit sauce. Good, but not jam.
Jam should be a concentrated burst of flavor. It doesn’t need to be as sweet as store-bought, but it should be obviously sweet. And then, to balance that overt sweetness and double down on the concentrated-ness of the flavor, it should to be quite tart, maybe even a touch bitter. Enter the humble and otherwise maligned black currant. Or wild blackberries. Or rhubarb.
What is your favorite kind of jam?
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