So, let’s talk jam. This is another one of those areas where we’ve heavily moved to simplify our preservation efforts.
Like many, we love to preserve our fresh fruit from the season by making jam. Our past selves used to go “all out” with typical canning methods, ensuring that our jam would be shelf stable and very long lasting. It was a lot of work, but it worked for us and so that’s just how we went about things.
But, one of the interesting things between Kayde and I is that we have fairly wide and very different culinary backgrounds. In my early days, where I was learning how to cook, I had access to a lot of fresh fruit and one of the things I would often do is make up freezer jams. As a single bachelor, this was perfect for those lazy PB&J nights, but I still got the satisfaction and pride of homemade. So, a few years ago, I taught Kayde the technique.
And as they say, the rest is history. She was so enamored by the ease of the process, that after talking about it, we decided that freezer jam would just be our way forward. It totally “fit” a lot of our current preservation methods where we’re relying on the freezer for a lot of our food preservation. This preservation style fits our northern lifestyle since we barely have to spend electricity to run our freezers through much of the winter since we keep our freezers outside.
In case you don’t know, freezer jam is a perfectly legit jam making technique. You’ll literally find the recipes for freezer jam in your box of pectin, but there’s lots of other sources for recipes as well. What’s great about the technique is it doesn’t require any canning knowledge or specialty tools. If you can use a stove top, mix things together and put it into a jar, then you can make freezer jam. It’s versatile across all sorts of types of fruits and there’s very little food safety concern since you’re just freezing your jam anyway.
We’ve also learned that we only need so much jam in our lives. While it’s certainly great to have variety, we definitely don’t need six different types and an entire shelf dedicated to jams. Honestly, while we love jam as an ingredient, it’s just not something we tear through when compared to other things we grow and preserve. So, we make maybe six to twelve jars a year and that’s it. All other fruit we grow is destined for fresh eating.
We say this a lot, but the more we’ve worked to preserve our home grown fruits and vegetables, the more we’ve heavily gravitated towards putting less and less effort into it. It’s not that we’re lazy, it’s more that we’ve recognized a pattern. We do this stuff every single year. So, we just need enough to get to next year. While we’re more prepared than most for an apocalypse, that’s not why we practice food preservation. We practice food preservation to make our short growing season work for us all year.
So, if you’re one of those that might be a bit uncomfortable with canning, there’s literally zero reason you shouldn’t be doing freezer jams! It’s a fantastic way to preserve those fresh, seasonal fruits and it makes for a great home made addition to toast, pancakes, PB&J sandwiches and anywhere else a jam is welcome!
