Mark and I were hiking down a trail we’d never checked out before in our local park, hoping to come across some chanterelle or oyster mushrooms (no such luck yet, but I have hope). Instead, among a forest of poison ivy, we found brambles on brambles of wild blackberry bushes! My first thought was a basil-blackberry spritzer (with vodka), but my second thought was, “there are enough here to make jam!”
Collection was a little painful – those thorns are no joke. But it was well worth it. We ended up with 1.25 pounds of them, and left many more to ripen on the branch. I’ve never made jam before, and figured it would take pectin or gelatin or something like that. That is true… but… wild blackberries have less sugar and more natural pectin than the store-bought kind! So rather than buying an ingredient I’d never used before, I took the gamble and tried the jam without pectin, using this Alphafoodie recipe.
I won’t take you through all the steps – that’s what the recipe is for. But I will tell you that I just squished up the blackberries by hand, added sugar and lemon juice, and that’s it! There are a couple different steps to heating it properly in order to get it to set, and it did take me a longer cooking time than the recipe suggested. But the end result is a thick, flavorful jam, that just cost me a little time and sugar. Well worth it for the satisfaction of making something new (with success) for the first time!
PS, pay no attention to the Prego jar.
Mark & Beth's Homegrown Adventure 