Tag: jam

Wild Blackberry Jam

The wild blackberries are small this summer. At least the ones I picked seemed tiny compared to the huge ones I picked as a kid. Those berries were almost as long as my little finger. Of course, my little fingers were also a lot smaller than they are today, so my memory might be colored by that fact. But small or large, wild blackberries make delicious jam.

If you want to make some of your own, start in late July by looking for blackberry patches on friends’ properties or along roads and hiking trails in the county, state and national forests of northern Wisconsin. Having identified some locations with good crops of unripe berries, you can go directly to those places in mid-August to harvest those luscious fruits before other hungry berry pickers beat you to them.

We are lucky to have blackberry patches close to our cabin. We are less fortunate to have competition from large black creatures with thick hairy coats that protect them from blackberry thorns. Bears survive because they are expert food scroungers. They have a sense of smell seven times better than a dog, which makes it possible for them to know when blackberries are ripe just by walking through the woods. Ripe blackberries have a wonderful fragrance you can smell when you hold a handful up to your nose. Bears can smell ripe blackberries a half mile away.

Bears have good memories too, especially for food. They return regularly to locations where they found good sources of food in the past. When they visit one of their favorite blackberry patches in July and find a good crop of green berries, you can bet that they won’t forget to be back in August when the smell of ripe blackberries tells them it is time for dinner.

You can always tell when a bear has been picking blackberries in a patch, because a bear tramples a nice wide path through the canes. These paths are handy for human berry pickers who are less tolerant of the thorns. Many’s the time I have thanked “Mr. Bear” (that’s what Dad always called bears) for making it easy for me to get to the center of a patch where the biggest berries are usually found. Even though “Mr. Bear” had eaten his fill, there were always enough left for me.

Picking blackberries is a relatively easy job, if you take some precautions against the thorns. Good walking shoes, long pants and and long-sleeved shirts are a must. One friend says he wears a leather glove on this left hand to hold or push canes out of the way while he picks with his right. I just resign myself to a few pokes and scratches.

Most blackberries grow at waist height, so you don’t have to bend over or crouch the way you do when picking blueberries or strawberries. Blackberries also don’t compact as much as raspberries, so your pail fills pretty quickly if you’re in a a good patch. Once you have eight or nine cups of berries in your pail, you have the essential ingredient for blackberry jam. The ingredients below will make nine to ten cups.

INGREDIENTS:

5 to 6 cups crushed blackberries
1 cup cold water
7 cups sugar
2 T lemon juice
1 pouch CERTO
Paraffin wax to seal the jars

PROCEDURE:

Start by washing and sterilizing enough jars to hold ten cups of jam. You may not need the tenth jar, but it is a lot easier to dry it and put it away than to try washing and sterilizing an extra jar while your jam is jelling in the pot. I sterilize the jars by placing them upside down in a baking pan and adding an inch of water. When the pan comes to a boil, turn off the heat.

Wash and clean the berries, removing any leaves, stems and other foreign items such as occasional insects. The best way to do this is to clean the kitchen sink thoroughly, pour in the berries and cover them with water. Then rinse small handfuls under a trickle of water from the faucet and put the clean berries in a colander to drain.

Put the drained berries in a pan or bowl and crush them with a potato masher. Measure five cups into a Dutch oven or soup pot, add a cup of cold water and bring the pot to a boil, stirring often. Reduce the heat and simmer the berries for five or six minutes, again stirring often. I use the potato masher to stir and continue crushing the berries while they simmer.

Measure seven cups of sugar into a mixing bowl and set it aside.

Remove the pot from the heat and measure two cups of juice and berries into a small bowl. Strain the rest of the liquid through a cloth in a colander over a bowl and rinse out the pot. Put the two cups of mashed berries and juice into the pot and add two cups of strained juice to the berry mixture. If you have a little juice left over, you can add it to the pot without danger. Don’t add more than two extra tablespoons of juice, however, or the jam might not jell properly.

Stir in the sugar and lemon juice and bring the pot to a boil. While the juice and berries are heating, open a pouch of CERTO per instructions on the package and set it near the pot.

When the pot reaches a rolling boil (a boil that can’t be stirred down completely), stir it constantly while it boils for a minute. Then stir in the CERTO and bring the pot back to a rolling boil. Boil the jam for one minute, then remove the pot from the heat.

Skim excess foam, if necessary, and stir the jam for two or three minutes to help ensure that the crushed berries don’t all rise to the tops of the jars.

After you have removed the jam from the heat, transfer the jars from the pan of water and allow them to drain briefly on a rack, then stand them upright on waxed paper.

While you are stirring the jam, melt some paraffin in a small sauce pan on a burner under very low heat. Be careful not to heat the paraffin more than just to melt it. Using a dipper and a funnel, fill the hot jars, leaving one third to a half inch head space. If necessary, use a piece of moistened paper towel to remove any dribbled jam from the inside of the tops of the jars.

Use a tablespoon to put a thin layer of melted paraffin on top of the jam in each jar and allow the jam to cool without moving it. After the jam is well cooled, add a second thin layer of paraffin.

Close the tops of the jars with screw caps or plastic wrap tied in place.

Wild Raspberry Jam

When I got back to the cabin from trimming one of the trails, I found a note on the table from Jerri that said simply, “11:20 Gone a-berrying.”

Whenever I see that expression I am reminded of Walden. Thoreau wrote in the chapter on “Visitors” that they included “Children come a-berrying.” And in the chapter on “Brute Neighbors” he described an incident when he was a-berrying: “Once, when berrying, I met with a cat with young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they all, like their mother, had their backs up and were fiercely spitting at me.”

I am not as good a writer or philosopher as Thoreau, but I can top that story. Once when I was a-berrying I came face to face with a black bear who was picking from the same patch as I. He did not, however, spit at me but rather said “Oof” and ran away. At least he was not to be seen when I looked over my shoulder a few minutes later.

Determined that we would make at least one batch of wild raspberry jam this year, Jerri had begun her berrying scarcely two hours after we arrived at the cabin. The next day she persuaded me to help pick for the project, and now she was off again. We ended up with more than enough wild raspberries to make eleven jars of jam.

Wild raspberries are smaller than the tame varieties and do not grow in nice neat rows. The best raspberries at the cabin grow in tangles of dead branches and old tree trunks left by the logger who salvaged logs from the “big blowdown” of 2005. Balancing on piles of tree limbs while holding a plastic container half full of berries can be a nerve-wracking experience. Deer flies can make it even more exciting.

Perhaps the challenge of picking them makes the berries taste more flavorful, but whatever the reason, people tell us that our wild raspberry jam tastes a lot better than the stuff you can buy in the supermarket. For one thing we do not use any high fructose corn syrup or any other artificial ingredients. And for another, every berry is lovingly picked, washed and crushed by people who are going to enjoy some of that jam this winter–namely us.

You can buy some pretty good tasting raspberry jam in specialty stores, but nearly all of it is made with tame raspberries and still costs a fortune. You can make even better jam by spending a few hours enjoying the outdoors in a county or national forest while you harvest those beautiful delicate red berries and end up with jam that costs a lot less. That’s if you do not count your time, gas money, sugar and pectin. But it is more than worth it, and you too might meet a bear.

Making the jam is easy and foolproof if you follow the directions.

INGREDIENTS:

4 cups crushed raspberries
6 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp. butter
1 pouch CERTO liquid pectin
paraffin

PROCEDURE:

First, wash and sterilize enough jelly jars to hold eight cups of jam. You can sterilize the washed jars by standing them upside down in a 9 x 13 inch cake pan on the the range. Pour about an inch of hot water into the pan, turn on the heat and bring the water to a boil. Boil for five minutes, then turn off the heat and leave the jars in the water while the jam is coming to a boil.

Put a slab of paraffin into a small sauce pan and set it aside.

Open the Certo pouch and stand it in a cup or glass where you can reach it easily when the time comes to add the pectin.

Be sure that all the berries have been picked over carefully and washed. Crush the raspberries with a potato masher and measure four cups of fruit into a three or four quart heavy saucepan or Dutch oven. Measure the sugar into a mixing bowl, then stir the sugar into the crushed berries. Add a half teaspoon of butter to reduce foaming. Turn the heat on low and stir occasionally. As liquid is released, raise the heat to medium high and stir frequently.

When the jam nears a boil, put the sauce pan with the paraffin on a burner under very low heat to begin melting. Be careful not to heat the paraffin more than just to melt it. Using canning tongs or a potholder, lift the jars from the pan of hot water and allow them to drain on a rack.

Keep stirring and bring the jam to a full rolling boil (a boil that keeps bubbling when you stir it). Stir in the pectin and return the jam to a full rolling boil. Boil for one minute, stirring constantly.

Remove the jam from the heat and skim off any foam. A gravy ladle works great for this. Stand the jars upright on waxed paper. Using a dipper and a funnel, fill the hot jars, leaving 1/3 to 1/2 inch head space. If necessary, use a piece of moistened paper towel to remove any dribbled jam from the inside of the tops of the jars.

Using a tablespoon, put a thin layer of melted paraffin on top of the jam in each jar and allow the jam to cool without moving it. You can use a toothpick to pop any bubbles that may form in the wax before it has begun to harden. After the jam is well cooled, add a second thin layer of paraffin. Pour any remaining paraffin into a small plastic container, cover and cool. You can pop it loose and use it for your next batch of jelly or jam.

Let the jam cool thoroughly for several hours. Then cover the tops of the jars with screw caps or plastic wrap tied in place.

NOTES: We use different plastic funnels for filling jars with jams or jellies. For jellies we use an ordinary plastic kitchen funnel with a stem about 1/3 inch inside diameter. For jams we use a funnel with the stem cut off the bottom of the mouth so that the opening is about 3/4 inch.

You can make good raspberry jam with tame raspberries too. A friend let me pick enough from his bushes to make two batches of jam last year. Because tame raspberries are sweeter than the wild ones, I added a tablespoon of lemon juice to each batch and the result was very tasty.