Raspberry Jam

While the potatoes were dehydrating, Rachel and I decided to make raspberry jam.  It has been several years since I have used the water bath canner. Andy started looking for all the supplies and has been bringing in different things that had to be washed. I went out to the garage and found a dozen brand new half pint jelly jars. They have the lids and bands. We could not find our magnet and the Ball Blue Book recipe I was going to use for the jam called for 1 pouch of liquid pectin. I have not used this before, but I wanted to follow the recipe. The box comes with 2 pouches. I found it at several stores and it can get a little expensive at some of the stores.

The recipe only uses a quart of raspberries, so we am going to have a lot of jam to make or dehydrate a lot of raspberries. We are using some for the kefir, so I will keep some frozen also.

I bought 25 pounds of cane sugar while I was out shopping. I am going to be needing a lot. I have blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, elderberries and rhubarb to use. Rachel was busy washing things and getting the kitchen ready while I was shopping.

We measured a quart of frozen raspberries and put them on the stove on warm to start to thaw. The recipes calls for mashed raspberries, so I mashed them.

  We had the canner filled and getting hot and the jars and bands washed and hot in another pot.

In another pan we had the clean lids and you cannot let these get too hot.

When I thought the water in the canner was getting close to being ready, we heated up the raspberries and when they were bubbling we added the sugar, all 6-1/2 cups of it!

  

 

After the sugar was dissolved, we added the liquid pectin and brought it to a boil and let it boil for a minute. We then filled the jars using the funnel, wiped the rims, put the lids and bands on, lowered down in the water and the recipe said to boil 10 minutes.

We took the jars out to cool and could hear them pinging. All 7 jars have sealed so far. I am a little worried about it, but it should be okay, but the lids are over 7 years old and have been stored in the garage. I am not even sure I bought them new. We had collected jars in 2007. Andy and I just went nuts looking for jars at thrift stores and gathered up probably 1000 jars or so, so I do not remember where they came from.  We had a neighbor who cleaned out her shed and gave us all her jars too and she had not canned for years.

This was a lot easier than the apple jelly and all the apple peeling we had to do. We are going to get an apple peeler/corer/slicer before we do that again, but as soon as I find apples at a decent price, we will make apple rings with the dehydrator and I will save the cores and peelings and make apple peeling jelly. I hope to find enough apples and make applesauce too.