Curious about making jam in a bread machine? Here’s one woman’s experience trying it!
Most of the time, I make jam on my turquoise, 45 year old, electric stove. I’ve also made jam on a camp stove, on an induction burner, on a plain gas stove and even on a high-powered commercial gas range. And now, I’m someone who is making jam in a bread machine.
Several months ago, I spotted this post on the King Arthur Flour blog, in which they make a batch of strawberry jam in a Zojirushi bread machine. Being that I’m fascinated by all things having to do with jam making (don’t tell me you didn’t notice), I determined that this was something I wanted to try. In the interest of science, of course.
I got in touch with the folks at Zojirushi and they very nicely agreed to give me a review unit so that I could see how this whole bread machine jam thing worked. It arrived on my birthday (which was more than a month ago now) and I spent at least a week circling it warily, uncertain whether I wanted to trust my fruit to an automated machine that wouldn’t let me control the heat source.
Finally I unswaddled it from boxes and styrofoam, mashed up two cups of strawberries and got to work. The instructions that come with the Zojirushi say to combine 2 cups of crushed berries, 3/4 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon lemon juice. For the first round, I followed the instructions exactly and cooked the jam without any additional pectin.
Fruit, sugar and lemon juice go into the pan. Then you close the lid and set it to the jam setting (don’t be fooled by the 3:45 time in the picture above, I took that before I set it run the jam cycle. It only takes 1:20 to make jam in the Zojirushi). When the cooking time is up, the machine issues a couple of friendly beeps so that you can rush over and check on your jam (that is, if you weren’t hovering very nearby, occasionally lifting the lid a little to peek at the progress).
So here’s the good news. This machine, which was designed to bake bread, makes perfectly adequate jam. It gets quite hot, the paddles keep the jam moving to prevent any scorching and it’s dead easy to use. If you’re the type who likes to freeze fruit and make small batches of jam throughout the year, making your jam in a Zojirushi is a really good option. However, it has a major flaw as a jam maker and that is that with the lid closed, you’re just never going to get the necessary amount of evaporation to get a really thick jammy jam.
I did one batch without pectin (sorry, no pictures of the jam with pectin, I knocked it over just after pouring it into the jar and splattered my kitchen entirely in sticky fruit spray) and one with and both remained stubbornly runny and without the body that a good jam should have (though the batch with 2 teaspoons of powdered pectin did firm up more than the batch without).
The picture below pairs a stove cooked jam (on the left) with the jam cooked in this bread machine. You can see the difference in the body of the jam. The stove top jam reduced by more than 1/3 during cooking, resulting in a thick-set, glossy jam. The bread machine jam on the right is juicier and has saturated the bread with its syrup. Not a bad thing, but an imperfect thing to use on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It would be perfect stirred into yogurt or drizzled on ice cream though.
I will say that I’ve been absolutely blown away by the quality of the bread that the Zojirushi makes. Of course I couldn’t resist using it to bake up a few loaves while it was hanging out in my kitchen and wow. We haven’t bought bread in weeks thanks to this machine.
My favorite jam project every summer is picking raspberries my parents back yard and making beautiful jars of jam for when the summer sun fades.
Well, due to my jam making habit, I have created a beast! My family and various relatives are now addicted to the jam. My bro-in-law is coming and I am thinking of putting a padlock on the jam cabinet! He’s already threatened to steal my stash. 🙂 So, this jam/bread machine would be awesome!
No jam making stories since I’m new to the whole canning and preserving thing, but I remember one time I bought a small jar of wonderful strawberry jam from the Amish as a special treat and got very upset when my jam was stolen for use in a batch of cookies (of a variety that I didn’t even like!)
I was six years old when mom had a lady over to show her how to make jam with a bunch of blueberries we had picked. I remember two things about that day- the popping of the jar lids, and the smell from the kitchen area. It’s not what you think, because they were making other things at the same time.
I was sensitive to the smells. I remember going to my room and looking for something to help. I came out with my winter coat wrapped around my head. Made sense to me at the time…
Now I love cooking so much that I’m creating mixtures of aromas from my own kitchen, although my kids have never complained.
There is nothing like the taste of blackberry jam to transport be back to my childhood. It was such a special treat! Now I’m living on my childhood homestead and enjoy harvesting and jamming the blackberries for my family and friends. I’ve noticed an increase in the number of friends since I learned to make jam, by the way.
The first jam I ever made was some strawberry freezer jam that I made when I was in Junior High. For some reason I topped it with paraffin when it was still warm and had to pick wax bits out of the jam. It still tasted very good.
I just cooked up a small batch with an overabundance of strawberries…just 3 jars, enough for a few weeks of toast an bagels. My almost-3-year old son loved helping!
I have been making jam and preserves for years… started out helping my mom when I was a kid. Somehow I’ve never tried it anywhere but a regular old stovetop though 🙂
My favorite jam memory is making with dad-blackberry jam — so good!
wow! who’d a thunk? cool – even though I see it didn’t thicken up, I bet it would make a really good icecream topping, or like you said, for yogurt & such! Oh I am in such a need for a breadmaker & this looks like the cadillac version!
OMG! that is the coolest thing ever! Beats standing over the stove stirring!!
My first jam was small batch blackberry…. yum! Jam is my favorite thing to can.
One fall someone gave me tons of small ugly apples. I decided to turn them into apple butter. It was a lot of work peeling, cutting, cooking them down, and down, and down, and down. I thought I would have these big pint jars full and ended up with 6, 4 oz. tiny jars for gifts. : ( I went to Walmart and they had pints for $1. I have not made it since. : )
My favorite homemade jam came when I was in college. Jam made from the wine grapes in my parents back yard, still chunky and a little sour. It was such a world apart from the grape jam I knew from the grocery store, it became part of my culinary awakening :)!
I have never made jelly or jam before. I recently bought a canner & the accessories & am getting ready to make my first jam, but am very nervous about it. I’d love to try making jam in the bread machine, too.
Runny jam is better than no jam.
We were running low on strawberry jam. So I made a big batch of freezer strawberry jam only to find out that a lot of jars were hiding in the deep freeze. Needless to say, I had a lot of jam to use that year. Thankfully, it’s our favorite.
I’ve been making different jams for the last week. Hmmm….don’t have a Zo but I might just try it my bread machine and see what I get!
My first jam was peach from my own peaches and it was great even with no recipe. I guessed and no one got sick :). Sine then I made vanilla grapefruit marmalade which sadly didn’t set and cardamom orange kelly which didn’t either. Plum chutney and grape ketchup were successful. Also made pickles from pineapple and a green tomato and a mixed veg. All good but the pineapple was a poor choice. It’s hard to improve on pineapple. When does the book come out?
One year I was determined not to use commercial pectin in my strawberry jam. I just cooked equal amount of fruit and sugar and stirred and stirred and stirred and stirred until it was jammy. The first batch I over cooked and I could have sliced it in the can and called fruit roll ups. Because of this I ended up under cooking the 2nd batch and we used it mostly as a strawberry sauce on ice cream.
When my husband and I were first married we lived out of hotels because he was an intern and the road life was our life. Craving a little domesticity (before it was cool to admit it), I whipped up my very first batch of blackberry jam in our suite at the Residence Inn. Little did I know that it would be the start of a new hobby.
I have dreamed of a Zojirushi for years b/c it produces bread that looks like bread! The fact that it boasted that I could make jam in it too,well… that seemed perfect…except the price!A zojirushi has always been out of my budget.
I don’t know that I have made jam in an interesting place, but I have tried all types of ingredients! This spring I finally tried my hand at loquats! I had wanted to for years they grow in abundance here in SC! I tried it with pectin(basic jam) and the old-fashioned way(preserves)…as usual, the long-cooking, old fashioned way won out! This gorgeous amber-y citrus-y apricot-ish confection came out!!! What joy!
I have wanted to make jam for the last few years, but was always afraid. After reading your post on weck jars, I looked them up a bought a dozen of the mini (approx 5 oz.) jars. Yesterday, my 5 year old and I tried your urban preserving strawberry vanilla jam. Yay! It worked. The jam is delicious, and my four mini jars all sealed and I have a tad bit in the fridge to use right now. To top it all off I shared the experience with my daughter. Now I’m ready to try your urban preserving pickles.
I recently started my jam making adventures. The first one was strawberry mango, which tasted soooo heavenly. Unfortunately for me, I canned them in huge pint jars, not 8 oz jelly jars (duh!). When I gave them as gifts to my mom, grandma, aunt for Mothers Day, that left me with only one jar. Boo hoo. Since then, I’ve made Strawberry Cranberry Orange, Plain Yum Strawberry, and Blueberry. My next jam adventure? Peach! We have so much jam now, I really would love to have some delicious homemade bread to go with it. 🙂 PS, love your site!!!!
I make jam every year…some years I make glazes (because the jams don’t gel for whatever reason). One year I had a large number of jalapeno “glaze” and garlic “glaze” in Christmas gift baskets because my jellies and jams didn’t come together. I attached a gift card stating the glazes were delish on chicken and pork (they were). While jam making is a science, one just never knows so I embrace whatever I end up with because, regardless of thickness, it usually tastes pretty good.
I must add that this year I am saddened by all the rain here in the northeast as our strawberries are not great. I try to use local produce in my jams but may have to venture a little farther from home this year. However, I remain jubilant at the idea of making jam for my family and friends! I love your posts, keep supplying us with wonderful information and inspiration.
I love making my husband’s grandma’s strawberry rhubarb jam with it’s unconventional ingredient: jello!
I started making fig preserves with big turkey figs from my backyard as a child. Many years later, after my mother had passed away, my elderly father mentioned he missed her home made preserves. That motivated me to go back to my mother’s recipes and in addition to my mother’s strawberry fig preserves, I’ve been learning to make all sorts of jellies and jams. Though my father has joined my mother, they left me with a desire to pass onto my children an art of preserving.
I made strawberry jam on Sunday during a day of nonstop kitchen action. I had some cream to use up so I made some butter…and yesterday ate homemade bread with homemade butter and homemade jam for breakfast! How cool am I?
The first time I made jam, I had very little of what I needed. I had some jars but no lifter (I used tongs), no rack (I used a round cake rack), no funnel (I ladled) but I was determined to can some of my own harvest. I made some of the best concord grape jelly, tomato jam and ginger pear jam I have ever tasted. Fortunately, I am pretty well stocked for canning these days…sure could use a bread maker though!
I tried to make strawberry jam last summer, and I ended up with strawberry syrup. I never figured out how to make the jam gel.
The first time I made jam was about 2 weeks ago. I used your small batch Strawberry Vanilla recipe. It was delicious. It didn’t get as thick as I would have liked but it is terrific on ice cream, pacakes, and waffles. Maybe I didn’t cook it long enough? I did bring it to a fast boil and then checked to be sure that I had it up to temperature. Oh well, I’ll just have to keep trying!
I made jam last week in the microwave. It was a recipe from Small Batch Preserving. It was a first both making jam that didn’t use pectin and jam using the microwave. It turned out beautifully.
Also, we have been using an old Zojirushi that w bought at a yard sale for years. We haven’t bought bread in a long, long time. I love that thing!!
Very, very sadly (and hopefully something that will be remedied soon) i have never made jam!! If i win i shall make batches and batches of jam and spread it on the multitude of loaves of bread that i shall be making as well:):):)
I’m so glad you tried this, I saw the KAF post too and it’s been on my mind! I’m the person that would go for a walk around the lake with a baggie so I could stop and pick berries. I put them in the freezer until there are enough for a batch! I love to make jam:@)
What could be better esp. in the camper than to make jam and then the bread to spread it upon. The multi use concept intrigues me. thanks for sharing the idea.
I made your tomato jam in my very old, very well-used cuisinart bread maker. It was too saucy so I boiled it down on the stove for a bit and it turned out amazing. As soon as my tomatoes come in this year, tomato jam it is! Thanks for such a great blog!
Rebecca
I can remeber as a young girl going to my grandparents and helping them to can. It was an awesome time, we had so much fun. I remember going out to the gardens to help my grandfather pick the strawberries or what ever we were going to can that day. To this day, every time a see a jar I lovingly think of those wonderful days. i have been canning for years and because of my grandparents I enjoy doing it.
the first time I made jam was with my then-boyfriend/now-husband, who worked at an orchard. he brought home two varieties of plums, and we jammed away for hours in a hot july kitchen. we had the preserves all winter long, it was so wonderfully delicious.
I would LOVE to try this! My “jam story” is that I tried to double-batch so I could get through the mound of strawberries more quickly. I now have 2 dozen jars of lovely and delicious strawberry syrup with pieces of strawberries in it. Looks a lot like your Zojirushi jam, actually. But yours was less work and time, I’m sure.
this still seems like it could have many uses, such as for making fruit syrups!
my jam story is from when i first started learning to make jam. my little girl was helping me, she was five years old then and she was in a phase where every time we were cooking she would pretend we either had a cooking show, or we were giving a group tour in our cooking factory. 🙂 anyway, i had chosen a pot that was too small for the batch once i added the sugar, and it overflowed onto the stove and caught fire. i was busy putting baking soda and pot lids over the fire, and i could hear her calmly escorting the studio audience out of the kitchen and out the front door.
even though she handled it brilliantly, apparently she is still scared three years later, because to this day she reminds me that i need a bunch of pot lids handy before i start making jam.
I love making jams and jellies. I am still fairly new at the whole thing, but that hasn’t stopped me one bit. I am amazed that you made jam in a bread machine!! That is awesome!!
So far this summer I’ve made 2 batches of strawberry jam and I made it the old fashioned way..I made my own pectin to use in it..and it was well worth the work. I’ve also made dandelion jelly…sooo good!! Yesterday I tried my hand at blueberry syrup and I plan on using the leftover blueberries to make blueberry jam. I have a list of all the wonderful jams and jellies I want to create.
I’ve never tried making jam in a breadmaker. But I recently made a pretty good mango/pineapple jam. It tasted just like candy!
My husband’s Aunt Marlene is a food editor. She was visiting one year during strawberry season and she mad jam with us.
I guess I was about 10-11 years old when my friend brought me to the old lady on the next street to make fig jam. I had never even heard of figs before that day. The old lady gave us something to put the figs in, because we got to pick them from her tree. She gave us some jars to bring home, but I was the only one to try it because nobody wanted fig jam (fig trees are so common where I live that I was surprised to find out they’re sought after by others LOL).
made jam for my 1st time this spring. don’t think i’ll ever buy strawberry jam in the store again. so easy and absolutely amazing!!!
My jam story…mmmmm…well, I don’t like jam, I’m a jelly person, but I do make it…lots of it and then give it all away. I make a killer Dutch Chocolate Fig Jam that people fight over..I’ve never even tasted it…just whip up huge batches and pass them out. There’s only two jams I’ll eat: tomato and onion…
Making Jam was my first attempt at canning. It was so successful my family wanted me to sell it at the Farmer’sMarket.
ahhh, making tomato marmalade with my grandmother, using her grandmothers recipe : ) i hold this recipe dear to my heart.
wow this article is timely! i have my strawberries and vanilla beans with all the sugar, sitting in my fridge waiting to be made into jam tomorrow. too bad i don’t have this bread/jam maker now! i will have to heat up my kitchen and do it the old way. wish me luck! hope i win!
My grandma is getting old so last year before the holidays I wanted to pick her brain since life is sort and she is full of homemaking goodness. I wanted her to teach me to make her famous candy & how to can. Our first lesson was candy making. We made toffee, Carmel, peanut brittle ,and Mexican wedding balls. The only things that turned out was the peanut brittle because my grandma showed us while my aunt my mom and I watched. The other three all were burned or rock hard since we were too busy talking yo listen to the importance of the temperatures. Next was canning…. Peaches …. It was easier then candy making for sure but still a lot to take in. We just canned peaches in syrup then wanted to try a fancy peach mint salsa. Fresh it was delicious. Set and a few weeks Later it tasted like vomit with a crazy strong mint after taste…. To say the least we all get a good laugh about our family lessons and I’ve realized I’m better off learning just one on one with my grandma and then taking things into my own hands . All these I have mastered in my own kitchen and am glad I didn’t let those set backs keep me from canning because I LOVE IT!!!! I have tomatoes in the backyard growing waiting to be made into homemade catchup
I am making jam at church. It will be blessed from the start.
having always wanted to make jam, I made my first attempt about 3 months ago. I used a recipe from mes confitures (strawberry, raspberry juice jam with balsamic vinegar) and followed every step carefully and in the end, I came out with two mason jars of syrup. I guess practice will make perfect one day.
wow, jam and bread. What a pair! I have been dipping my toes into making both this year and have loved it so far.
Wowzas! What an amazing machine! Last year was my first year making jams and I was so in love with the long boil method. I remember having my brand new baby and convincing people to come over and watch him for 45 minutes in exchange for a small jar of fresh hot jam. Best Canning Ever!
After years of seeing our mom make strawberry, raspberry, rhubarb, peach, etc. etc. jam, my sister and I ventured to try ourselves in her college apt. It was 105 deg outside. She had no A/C. And we were hovering over a steamy stove. And the jelly was, at best, mediocre. But this year I am planning on tackling the jam making once again. This would be a lot of fun… to make bread and jam!
My favorite jam making story was a few years ago when I had been dating my boyfriend for about 6 months. He’s from Atlanta and I grew up in the middle of nowhere on 32 acres…since I now live in the DC suburbs I told him I wanted to go to a local pick your own farm to pick some peaches. He was excited by this because being from GA, he loves peaches. Anyway we go to pick peaches and he’s just so excited he wants to pick and pick…and I keep telling him that’s enough… but it’s not enough for him. Once we got to the register and later home with all those peaches, he understood why it was enough. ANYWAY I made two peach pies and three batches of jam and we had plenty to each eat one or two a day for a couple weeks… but he still wants to go pick peaches every year.
While I’ve never had any major jam catastrophes (fingers crossed), I have scored big in the frugal forager jam sweepstakes (haha) for the past few years. My mom hooked me up with a friend of hers who has a 1/4 mile long blackberry bramble – my sister & I, and now our sister-in-law, go picking every year for free berries & girl time. It’s great – minus last year’s downpour that left us soaking wet!
I can’t seem to get a handle on “small batch” cnaning. Every year fruit season rolls around and I swear up and down I’ll be doing just a couple of jars of many flavors of jam rather than large numbers of plain strawberry. Most recently I ended up making jam with some rhubarb, hoping for a pint or three and *poof* ten pints and some leftover for the fridge. Finished at midnight, of course. Oops.
I remember making jam with my parents growing up a loooooong time ago! lol! I would love to make it again and this would be a perfect start!
Last summer, due to job loss, we reluctantly decided to put our house on the market and move in with my parents, 3 1/2 hours south. We emptied the house out, moved down, and my husband promptly got a job back home. He moved back, but we didn’t have the money to hire a truck to move our stuff back home. My parents left on a cross-country trip, and I was left by myself with my 2 kids in the heat of summer, in my parents’ house, and few friends. So, I canned for about 2 months. Peaches, pickles, apricots, raspberries, blueberries – it helped me feel more grounded and gave me something productive and satisfying to do while I waited to move back home. It helped me feel that the summer wasn’t wasted. Now I am starting up again this summer, I just made 2 batches of jam today, and it is bringing back memories from last year.
Thank you for the generous giveaway.
Finger’s crossed I win this one! Favorite canning mishap? When I was making orange marmalade on the bar surface and didn’t notice the juice spilling over the other side onto my carpet!
I made jam exactly once, and have never canned any. It looked a lot like your bread maker jam; time to try again!
hmm, which jam story. Over the last several years I’ve made jam a few times from the blackberries on the family property that was bought by my great-great-great grandparents in 1863. This summer will be my first summer in my new house, and I have lots of wild blackberries in my very own yard to make jam with. I’m very excited.
Another year I snuck into the yard behind my previous house and stole pomegranates to make jelly with. (nobody ever picked them and they’d just eventually fall off the tree and rot.
My favorite is to make jam (and can) with friends! I don’t care where we do it just love spending time laughing and it always makes it go faster 🙂
I don’t think I’d make jam in a Zojirushi, but I’d sure like to make bread in it! My favorite jam moment involved picking through pounds of gleaned (ie., free…) cherries to find those that could be used for jam. Money was tight, and that jam lasted for eighteen months – well worth the effort.
Just moved to California. Looking forward to preserving some of the goodness that grows out here.
I plan to make refrigerator (or is it freezer) strawberry jam this summer. It’s ridiculous the amount of money I spend buying it at the grocery store.
When I decided I wanted to make Pomegranate jam for holiday presents (since I adored poms way before they were trendy and thusly you couldn’t buy a pom jam or jelly locally in Maine) and thus my then fiance and I bought a case of rounded jelly jars, pretty lids to replace the boring ones and a bunch of poms. I cooked it while trying to deal with his mom’s finicky stove and disaster of a kitchen. I worried about it not setting so I overcooked it. It was a lovely pom caramel syrup though.
I have been canning less than a year so I don’t have any good stories yet. Certainly nothing as funny as the time I managed to light Rice Crispy treats on fire! Now that takes amazing culinary prowess 🙂
My very first jam was a caramelized apple jam. It was an overly ambitious and needlessly complicated first recipe. I had to caramelize sugar 2 different times in the same recipe. It didn’t exactly turn out like jam but it has since become very popular with my in-laws as an ice cream topping. I told them all that’s what it was supposed to be 🙂
The very first batch of jam I made by myself was plum jam when I was in high school. I had helped my mom before, but this one I did start to finish by myself. It turned out perfect, and was so proud of it, I was telling everyone. My choir teacher told me “You’re so domesticated, it makes me sick.” Such a lovely woman, bless her heart…
interesting machine. i think my mom might like it. we made strawberry jam outdoors on a camp stove during my daughter’s third birthday party last month. lots of guests all stirring the pot–it was a true community jam. and it was delicious! all guests went home with a little more knowledge, plus a delicious party favor!
Our first house came with a lemon tree and not wanting to waste all those lemons, I learned to preserve lemons. Our second house came with pomegranite trees and not wanting to waste all those pomegranites, I learned to make pomegranite jelly and syrup. We moved into our latest house last year and now have some really nice avocado trees, so not much hope for canning those fruits, but I woundn’t mind having an new bread/jam maker for those trips to the farmer’s market.
I tried making microwave jam one time and thought they said “35 minutes.” I am pretty sure they said “3 to 5 minutes” now. LOL There was smoke pouring out of the microwave. I think that attempting to make it in a bread machine sounds more my speed. 🙂
My own jam making is still future tense, but one of the things I always loved about summers growing up was picking buckets and buckets of plums and blackberries from our yard. The plums were typically made into syrup, but the blackberries (that survived the picking) became jam. My job was to stir and help pour the sealing wax once in jars. I always loved popping the wax disk off on a new jar too!
I’ve been lusting after the Zojirushi bread machine for some time, but it’s just a bit out of my budget’s range right now.
One of my first attempts at strawberry jam resulted in a gob of goo that could have been used as a paperweight and I don’t think there’d even have been concern about the papers getting sticky! That was rather a sad way to learn a lesson about gel points. I’ve gotten much better at judging the jamminess of jams and now friends come asking for my strawberry margarita jam. 🙂
Think you can make margaritas in the Zojirushi?
Last week I went with Scientific approach to apricots and Pomonas pectin… one batch exactly as called for, one with one tsp less pectin and one with 2 tsp less… decided I liked the slightly less than called for amount of pectin… combined with last months scientific approach to the calcium water… (which I determined didnt really matter… at least with frozen berries).. I think I am set to try just about anything with pomonas…
So my first ever attempt at making jam was with raspberries. I ran out of sugar on the second batch, was worrying that it wasn’t going to turn out right, my roommate came home to see me covered in raspberries (face, hair, clothes) and laughed. Then he ate all my jam over the next few months which was supposed to be used as christmas presents. I almost killed him once I realized it was pretty much all gone.
My first time making fancy jam involved a several-day process of making green apple pectin and letting things rest in the fridge. Not thinking things through so well, I let my Winco crate of green apples sit in a cupboard for a very long time before making the pectin and jam. Overripe green apples do not for a good set make. My jam was extremely runny.
My first jam making memory was when I was a little girl. My mother would let me pick my own thimble berries & then mix them up with some sugar & spread it on toast… I felt like such a great chef! I still love making Jam! This year I made strawberry jam, grape Jelly and Orange Marmalade!
I don’t really have any interesting jam making stories. I always make it on the stove, the boring way 😉
I’ve made jam once using an old time method. It ended up being a syrup…but everyone loved it! LOL!!!
Great blog, by the way.
Susan
Wish I had a jam making story. I do promise, however, to tell you the story if I win and have the chance to make some. It’d be an interesting comparison to yours. You, an experienced maker of fine jams using a new machine. And me, an neophyte jam maker trying to make edible jam.
Made my first blueberry/blackberry jam combo last year and it was awesome! Making strawberry jam tomorrow! I’d love to win a Zojirushi! I’ve always wanted one!
I grew up picking blackberries with my mom and aunt to make jam, and now I am teaching my daughter and niece to do the same! There’s just something special about being able to pass down these traditions. =)
last summer i had a friend give us a bunch of lemons from his back yard, so i vowed to make lemon jam and give some back to him. being a total newbie, i overcooked it, and while it is more like lemon crumbly-jam, it’s quite tasty. clearly, more practice is needed by yours truly.
My overzealous partner brought home 2 flats of marionberries last year, which was completely overwhelming, as I’d only made strawberry jam prior to this. Oh yeah, and I had an infant to care for too! Needless to say, I froze a lot of them, but jammed many too! I love how every time I have some on toast, I’m reminded of that time in my life, my little son on one hip, stirring pot after pot of purple-blue sweetness.
Mulberries are dropping in my NYC neighborhood(people want to cut these tress down when the berries drop on the sidewalks.It’s food,people!)and I’ll soon be harvesting & making some jam!I’ll use my grandmother’s Foley food mill to remove some seeds and enjoy
This looks like fun making jam in a zorjirushi. My 5 & 7 year olds like to help make jam and this seems less hazardous than boiling batches on the stove. The latest canning “toy” is a food mill that I got for tomatoes that the kids fought over using and stayed up way past bedtime helping. Thankfully it’s summer break.
One of my favorite childhood memories is going out with my grandmother in Texas to pick wild grapes and watching her make grape jelly to give to her friends. (It never crossed my mind that there might be snakes in those vines!)
I’d love to try making jam in a Zojirushi! And bread!
What a give away!
I’ve actually never made jam. My grandmother canned everything, and most everything we had growing up was home grown and made by her hands. I don’t think I tasted store-bought jam or even ketchup until I was in grade school. That’s why I read this blog: To gain inspiration and the courage to undertake my own canning adventure. So you see, I’m desperately in need of one of these machines in order to better myself and honor my position in motherhood appropriately.
Jam in a bread machine? Wierd.
I haven’t been at this long enough to have any really good jam making stories, so I will share a recent event. A co-worker gifted me a couple of pounds of plums from his backyard tree. I took them home and made a batch of gently spiced plum jam. I returned his container, washed, with a half-pint of jam nestled inside. His kids were amazed that they were eating jam from their own plum tree. It gave me the warm fuzzies.
zmy very first batch of jam was blackberry from the Ball Blue Book. Little did I know that when it calls for a large pot, it means LARGE. I was determined though, and dutifully stirred and checked with the spoon test for the gelling point… and got burned by little splats that weren’t contained by the pot. My kitchen looked like a crime scene afterwards, but lo, I had JAMMED! 🙂
I’m new to the jam making, but I tried a strawberry-balsamic jam recently. The recipe called for 8 cups of strawberries and I bought eight pounds. I have tons and jam now — good thing I like it!
My favorite jam story is my first try at making cherry with out a the advantage of having a cherry pitter. So I used a icing decorator tip on my finger and pitted 10 pounds of cherries. I got so covered in cherry juice that I had to change into a oversized t-shirt and sat on my back porch which caused my husband to laugh for about 2 hours straight. He claimed that I looked like Carrie from the movie based on the Steven King novel. The jam, a cherry amaretto, was fabulous!
I’d love to try my mom’s recipe for Sour Plum Jam made this way — sign me up!
THANKS
Would propping the lid open take care of the runniness?
I tried to make strawberry jam. Having only ever canned one thing before, I wasn’t sure how long to cook, so I cooked and cooked, and cooked…well, I canned it and upon it cooling off, discovered I had made eight lovely jars of strawberry jerky. 🙁
still haven’t made my own jam yet, but I can’t wait to do so. I loved helping my former mother-in-law make strawberry jam in her kitchen, though!
I just make jam in my own pretend mind! Wanna give it a try this year!
I make jam in an unairconditioned kitchen. I think a bread machine like this for making jam to got with my Greek yogurt would be perfection!
My Mother together with her best friend, Lois, made jam every summer when I was a kid. And I am here to claim, jam making is infectious. Both my sister and I still make our jams. Mom and Lois made apricot/pineapple (my favorite then and second favorite now). They made all the berries, too, black, blue, straw, logan, young, and marion. YUM! We would go the local farmer’s market and they bought by the lug and cooked over several days after they got off work.
As I write this I marvel at how much jam we ate. We were five altogether and the larder had rows of jars of jam. Such sweet memories.
Oh, and my favorite jam now is Fig with lemon and thyme….almost fig time around here and it is apricot time now!