Adventures in jamming and canning

A bit over a week ago I picked up 60 lbs of peaches with our bountiful basket contribution. There were some additional things in our basket that I was able to use in jam making also. I admit, the little things thrill me...I was so excited.
It started with peeling peaches. If you haven't had the joy of trying that...do it lol. I tried blanching them. 30 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 30 seconds....all the way to 2 1/2 minutes and the skins still wouldn't slide off like the directions said. Once blanched they are impossible to peel with a potato peeler. We muddled through that, 20 lbs of blanched peaches, then graduated to the peeler.
Skipping all the mundane steps we get to the jams.
The night before I had made pineapple coconut jam. It was truly glorious. A taste of paradise. I'm in heaven.
It involved a whole pineapple peeled and cored then pureed in a blender.
While that pureed I cracked the coconut, saving the water. I dug out all the delicious meat(the white part) trying not to get any of the brown skin. Once that was freed from it's shell I pureed it, or attempted to. Turns out coconut doesn't puree real well, it chops to a gritty fine mess. I took that gritty fine mess and poured it into cheese cloth over a bowl...and proceeded to squeeze as much of the milk out as possible. I saved the water and the milk. Blended the coconut and pineapple together, added the water and milk as needed to make it smooth.  After that it all got dumped in a pan, sugar dumped in(I didn't keep track, it was about 1 cup less sugar than puree mess). Brought to a boil, pectin added, boiled for another minute then dumped in hot jars. Lids on and into the bath blah blah blah ;) . Afterwards I had 6 jars of amazing jam. The flavor is to die for.
But lets get back on track to the peaches.
Only a couple little glitches amazingly. The first being peeling the peaches. Muddled through, no problem.
from that we got peach jam, mango pineapple peach jam, and strawberry jam.
From there we moved on to canning fruit.
Peaches first off... they float. bad. I packed those jars tight. I crammed in as many peach slices as I could...and they still float. I'm confident in the processing though so they will be safe to eat. I added a little citric acid to keep the fruit from browning if it floated above the syrup.
 Speaking of syrup...I tried first a light syrup, got the first floaters. Googled that crap and saw that a heavy syrup might help floaters. I made heavy syrup. Got more floaters. Googled more and decided not to fuss over it since everything I read said it's ok.  So we got floaters.
Next was strawberries. I had some extras from the jam so what the hell, why not, lets throw some strawberries and syrup into a half pint jar, well, 4 jars.
That left about 5 lbs of grapes. I was so not about to peel those little bastards, so they didn't get used in jam. But...it is possible to can them. So why not. I had the  jars. I have kids that will eat them. I had lots of grapes.
Made more syrup, dumped them in jars.
Then the processing fun begins.
I got a 23 qt pressure cooker/canner.  I love it.
I put the quarts of peaches in. I put the second rack on top. On that went the grapes and  strawberries. lid on and back to a boil before starting the timer for processing.
Processed 20 minutes in a boiling water bath. opened up the canner...to find pink water.
Steam clears out and I start taking jars out to discover 2 of the strawberries had boiled over and leaked because I apparently didn't leave enough head space. No biggie, set those aside to fridge and eat now.
Finished up the peaches. Started taking jars out to discover just what that loud pop was that I heard. I had major floaters...in the canner. Peach slices everywhere. Apparently when you accidentally put two lids in one ring it pops off leaving you a big mess to clean up.
So there is the most recent adventures in canning and jamming.
It was a blast.

adventures in jelly making revisited

You may recall previous mention of an attempt at making apple jelly.
It REALLY didn't go well.
I boiled it as long as the instructions said to. Processed the jars exactly how long it said to, disinfecting them in boiling water before filling. The lids all popped and sealed nicely.
And last night I decided to check and see if that magical rainbow spewing and glitter farting unicorn flew by and waved its magic wand making the jelly perfectly set.
No such luck.
Instead I found every jar with what looks like a kombucha scoby. A vast island of fungus coating the top. When you tip the jar it actually looks pretty cool as it slides down the syrup thick apple concoction.
The scientist hidden deep inside me wants to leave it and see what happens, and the nurse in me wants to gag.

Adventures in canning part 3

So, having gotten the bug I decided I would venture out a little more. I made strawberry jam a couple weeks ago... I'm in heaven. The taste is so strawberryish(I don't think that's really a real word), the texture was perfect, it set beautifully. Having gained a little confidence I decided that 6 lb bag of apples on the counter that no one was eating needed to be turned in to jelly.

I was tired and decided to take a short cut. Wrong turn detour go back do not do. Short cuts and canning are not ok.

I put the apples in the pressure cooker to turn them to mush.

Problem with that is they didn't cook long enough to really release their juice and all that natural pectin.

Thinking I'm just brilliant and cut the prep time down by oh about 3 hours I commenced with the jelly making. I took the apple mush and ran it through a sieve over and over. I put some in cheese cloth, tied the top and squeezed more juice out. I finally had the 6 cups of liquid I needed. Dump it in the pot, add sugar, add the half bag of pectin, boil and stir.

It didn't thicken.

Add the other half the pectin packet.

Boiled.

Stirred.

It didn't thicken.

Got another packet out, added half.

Boiled.

Stirred

 YES it's a little thicker.

Thinking I had success I proceeded to pour it in the jars, lid them, put them in the hot water to be boiled.

Timer goes off, take them out, the musical popping of lids sealing happens immediately, I leave the jars to set overnight.

In the morning...I had liquid jelly.

I stuck a jar in the fridge.

The next morning....I had liquid jelly. I took all the jars to the basement food storage area and left them.

A week later....I had liquid jelly.

I don't think it was successful.

Next step is to open the jars and dump that sweet appley goodness down the drain and try again.

Adventures in jelly

After the jam making our confidence was slightly elevated, oh hell, for that matter we felt like we could do anything. So we decided to try making jelly.
We had apples and pears. We boiled apples with a pear thrown in for a little additional flavor. Pureed them, filtered the juice out, dumped it in a pot with sugar and pectin.
There were some slight chunks of pear floating around, but we weren't to worried about that.
We did encounter a couple problems though....
Foam.
Jams and jelly like to foam up when boiling. I learned later a pat of butter in the goo will stop the evil foam. On the jam it wasn't a big deal, since the jam is chunky anyway.
With the jelly though...the foam floated to the top. The bottom is so pretty. Clear pinkish color with a few pear flecks floating around...until the top...the foam...It set with the foam on top. It's quite ugly...but so appley sweet.
That was last year...this year I tried apple jelly again...that disaster coming soon....