Plum Jam

This is one of the easiest jams you can make. You don’t need pectin and it cooks pretty quickly into sweet, thick jammy goodness. I prefer a softer set, so I stopped cooking mine a little sooner than you might prefer. I like a jam that spreads easily, even after it has been opened and stored in the fridge. I hadn’t made plum jam in a long time. That will change after this. I love this jam.

Because I hadn’t made it in years, I did a test with just a couple of plums. The flavor was great, but some of the pieces of the peel seemed too big. I could see them in the finished jam. I was using plums with black/purple skins but golden flesh. I wanted the skins to break down into smaller flecks. When I put a couple of pitted plums in my smallest processor, they chopped up great, but not the peels. This is purely a cosmetic issue, but it bothered me. I ended up scoring the plums with a very sharp knife just at the surface into small, really small squares.Then I proceeded to remove the pits and chop up the plums in my processor. It worked out so well. Of course, by the time I had cooked a whole batch of jam, the longer cook time really turned the jam a dark red color. Not sure if the skins would have shown up. I will never know for sure. I was very pleased with how this jam looked in the end.

So here is the recipe. I got it from the NCHFP website. The only changes I made was to up the processing time to 10 minutes, so I didn’t have to sterilize the jars. I also let the jam sit in the canner a few extra minutes to prevent siphoning.

Plum Jam

2 quarts chopped tart plums (about 4 pounds) – any plums will work

6 cups sugar

1½ cup water

¼ cup lemon juice

Combine all ingredients; bring slowly to boiling, stirring occasionally until sugar dissolves. Cook rapidly to, or almost to, the jellying point (which is 8°F above the boiling point of water, or 220°F at sea level). Stir constantly to prevent sticking or burning.

Pour hot jam into hot jars, leaving ¼ inch headspace. Wipe rims of jars with a dampened clean paper towel; adjust two-piece metal canning lids. Process in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and allow jars to remain in canner 5 minutes before removing. Set jars on cooling rack or towel in a draft free place while they cool down. Check seals once jars are cool. Yield: About 8 half-pint jars.

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