This morning was a jam making morning! Someone had asked if I have a juicer. Yes, I have a Breville juicer and I love it but don’t use it for making jams and jellies.
There’s no right or wrong way to do most things . . if you’re happy with your end result, then you’re doing it correctly. So, please don’t take this past as “my way or the highway”.
For jellies, I boil the fruit, with just a tiny bit of water. Probably, it’s more like simmer the fruit in their own juices. Some fruits I leave the peeling on and some I remove the peeling. Plums I would boil with the peeling on because a lot of the tartness that I love comes from the peeling, as well as the beautiful bright color. For peaches, because I don’t want to find even a little bit of fuzz in my jelly, I peel them first.I
Once the juice has cooked out of the fruit, I will strain it with a bouillon strainer. This thing is expensive but I’ve had it since 2014 and I use the heck out of it. It strains out everything and leaves a crystal clear juice.
If you’re making a ton of juice, the Mehu Liisa steam juicer is amazing. Another expensive gadget but so worth it when you have gallons of juice to extract. We use this with the cactus fruit here and it makes easy work out of a big job. The juice shouldn’t need to be strained after coming through this but, when making cactus juice, I do strain it just to be sure.
The only drawback to this is that it does heat the juice up and that probably destroys some nutrients but since the jelly/jam has to be cooked anyway, I don’t let the heat worry me. If I were juicing to make smoothies, I would not use a steam juicer.
For jam, I use a food mill. For a soft fruit like plums, I simply wash them and dump them into the food mill. For a harder fruit, like apples or pears, I would cook them in a little water first.
You can see that the “juice” is a nice, thick pulp and this is what I use to make jam.
Today’s batch produced 13-1/2 jelly jars of jam so we have 26-1/2 jars. I’ll take Chad as much as he wants and we’ll keep the rest. But, I’m done with making plum jam for this year (I think).
Cilla says
I just looked up “Bullion Strainer” and it says it strains “soups, socks, meats, vegetables”………SOCKS??? They need a better editor but gave me my chuckle for the day. Thank you.
Pat Peele says
I think I would have to have a separate one for the “socks” than the one I use for stocks!
Joyce says
That gave me my laugh for the day! I needed that.
cassews says
Im the one who asked and its a steamer juicer . I just love it, I make the juice and then in the dead of winter I make jellies. So love it !!!
Judy Laquidara says
Yes, we always have juice in the freezer! There’s only so much you can do this time of year.
Susan Nixon says
The only thing I ever made that was tons of work was grape juice and jam. Other fruits are so simple after grapes! But the juice let me know just how much water the commercial companies put in their juices. It was SO good, and tempting to keep it all for juice. The only thing was how small the return was for how much fruit it took.
Judy Laquidara says
Yes! Sometimes, some fruits, I feel like I get a lot for the work but sometimes, I am shocked at how little I get. The plums were rather juicy but the seeds take up a lot of space!
Pomegranates hardly yield any juice!