Bog Roll ::

This week I got to try out my Christmas gift for the first time. We went to a local PYO farm and picked just over 2Kg of redcurrants (Ribes rubrum). They go very well with vanilla ice-cream, but we picked them to make jam.

There are two methods for redcurrants, a British method which gives you a pale pink jelly, and a French method which gives a darker and stronger flavoured jelly, but a lower overall yield.

Seeing as my new jamming pan is French we decided to try out the French method. Basically you boil your fruit in a drop of water, and mush it all up with the jam spoon. You then filter the mush out, and add 1:1 sugar to liquid. Boil that up to 105°C for just a few minutes then pot.

In the British method you add a lot of water to the initial boil, and you avoid mashing up the fruit. You add less sugar, and boil a lot of water off. You can then mash your fruit up and repeat giving a second press batch.

posted 12:50 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^