Prize-Winning Plum Jelly
The Prize-Winning Plum Jelly recipe is straight off an old SureJell leaflet:
5-1/2 cups prepared juice
1 box SureJell powdered pectin
7-1/2 cups sugar
Bring juice and pectin to full boil in large pot (I use my 6-quart pressure
cooker pot), dump in sugar at once, return to full rolling boil and boil for 1
minute. Skim foam and pour into 10 half-pint jars. Seal with 2-piece lids
and process 5 minutes in boiling water bath.
NOTE that the current SJ leaflet calls for 6-1/2 cups of sugar. Beats me.
I've won the First Prize ribbon for plum jelly at our State Fair 4 times. The
20 jars I put up last Thursday were from two bags of frozen juice -- one from
1992 (!!) and one from 1995. Glorious jelly. Tart sweet. I've still got juice
in the freezer from '92. Thank goodness for my bag sealer...
When I collect those blessed plums, I do it twice a day. Fill the
pressure cooker (not canner)
3/4 full of washed plums, add some water (maybe halfway up the depth),
cover with gasket
in place. Bring to pressure and cook for, what?, a couple minutes?
Reduce pressure quickly
and pour into the cloth-lined colander to drip the juice. If I'm feeling
up to it, I'll pit the cooked
plums (handling them carefully, it's not a bad job -- the pressure cooking
isn't hard on the
shapes) and run the mush through the Foley for plum butter -- got some
ribbons for that, too....
This is *the* way to extract the juice, IMNSHO. I don't know the variety
of the plum. It's
smallish; yellow-to-pink-to-red as it ripens. Sweet even when barely
pink. Not as big
as a walnut. I'm told it is not a wild plum. Beats me. Thanks, Mom!
If plum jelly isn't in my immediate future, I freeze it in 5-1/2 cup
portions for future
use. The first pickings (of a total of a week or two) are lighter in
color and higher in natural
pectin content than the last of them. I usually shake the tree and gather
from the ground.
This was a good exercise to keep two children occupied when they were
living at home.
--
Barb
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Source:
Melba's Jammin' (Schaller_Barb@htc.honeywell.com)
rec.food.preserving
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