Salted Vanilla Fig Jam

A lot has changed since I last published a post here. Back in July 2025, my family and I packed up our apartment in Center City Philadelphia and moved to Portland, OR. Portland is my hometown, so my expectation was that the transition would be pretty smooth. And honestly, while the number of logistical bumps were few, the truth is that the amount of uncertainty, discomfort, anxiety and adjustment was still monumental. It’s been 16 months now and I feel like I’m only now starting regain my equilibrium.

I didn’t do much canning the first summer I was here because we were living in a temporary apartment with a tiny kitchen and I was without most of my gear (our stuff stayed in storage until we knew where we would land for good). I would occasionally take over my mom’s kitchen (our rental was through their backyard and down a short walkway) to transform the grapes and apples friends gave me from their excess, but I was not actively seeking out preserving projects.

Thankfully, our Philly apartment finally went under contract in early December 2025 and we were able to start looking for a house to buy. Our kids had started school in Portland’s Parkrose district and so we kept our search to this area so they wouldn’t have to adjust to yet another school (it was the right decision). We found our house, closed in late January, and finally moved in mid-March (after a couple big repairs were completed).

After spending the entirety of my adult life in a high rise apartment, reacclimating to a house has been an ongoing process. When we first moved in, I unpacked just to get rid of the boxes. Now I’m redoing every closet and cupboard to make them functional. I’m still figuring out how best to work in the kitchen.

The yard came with a handful of mature fruit trees (Italian plum, fig, Fuyu persimmon, Asian pear, and a massive kiwi vine) as well as ten raised garden beds. My dad and I put in a big garden that did surprisingly well for our first year here. I spent a lot of the summer feeling overwhelmed and doing a wildly imperfect job with the fruit and veg that was pouring forth.

I spent a lot of late summer and early fall making fig jam. I have gotten to know a handful of my neighbors and twice now, Kirk from down the street has brought me figs from his backyard trees. Each time, it has been a bag or box groaning with figs. I did an imperfect job weighing the quantities but my best guess is that the total was somewhere around 16 pounds. Add that to the 20 pounds my own tree produced and the flat I bought at our local salvage grocery store (before I knew that I was about to be inundated) and it has been a lot of figs. I never imagined I’d be in a position where my desire for figs would be fully satiated, but this summer I learned it was possible.

Given that I had so many figs, I made a point of trying some new-to-me flavor combinations. I did one with ground cardamom that was good. Another with black pepper and balsamic vinegar which was good. But my favorite was this salted vanilla fig jam one, that combines a lemon, vanilla bean paste, and just 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt. There is something about that small addition of salt that just brightens and calibrates every other flavor in the jam. The vanilla becomes robust, the figs are somehow figgier and the lemon is present but not overwhelming.

Now, I realize that fig season is nearly or completely done for most folks right now. But I needed to find my way back here and get and writing about a recipe that I’ve made three times and have come to love seemed like the right way to do it. Even if you will need to bookmark this recipe for next year.

If you’ve made any of my other fig preserves in the past, this one will feel familiar to you. I always use two parts figs, one part sugar, and two tablespoons of lemon juice for every pound of fig I start with. Figs are lower in acid than many other fruits and so require a generous amount of lemon juice to ensure that they are safe for canning. Typically we use bottled lemon for acidification, but in this situation I find that since are using so much, it is better to use fresh lemon. I use double the amount called for to ensure that a safe pH is achieved.

This is not my only fig offering. I’ve also a classic three ingredient fig jam, fig meyer lemon marmalade, fig mostarda (I meant to make this one this year and then never managed to make it happen), fig jam with pectin, and a small batch strawberry fig jam.

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