I have used approximately the same ratios (1 c. fruit : 3/4 c. sugar : 1.5 tsp lemon juice) and procedure to make blackberry, blueberry, strawberry, raspberry, fig, and apricot/peach (2009 apricot yield was not so good). Most of them do not get to sit for 2 hours before heating, though—I mash the berries a bit, so the juice doesn’t need to be drawn out.

My husband was very skeptical about not using a canner, but we have (so far) had no “bad” jars, and he has become a convert who loves to help fill the jars. I have a degree in chemistry which I am not currently using, but this is great fun because it feels like a big chemistry experiment in the kitchen. The syrups over homemade vanilla ice cream were definite crowd pleasers…Thank you so much for your recipe and encouragement. I wanted to let you know how well it worked and how much I (and my family) love making and eating homemade jam!

Thank you again and again…

I remember when “Fowlers Vacola” preserving kits were all the rage in Australia in the 1970’s. They always seemed realing daunting and way too technical for me to use.

Having just moved into a house with an apricot tree, bursting with fruit. It would be such a shame to see any of it go to waste. But now that I’ve read your recipe from start to finish, it won’t. I feel confident that “I can do it”. I just have to gently,get re-acquainted with the ladder first (don’t much care for heights).

it will be a lovely step back in time for me, to the “olden days” and a great new skill to pass on to my 12 year old daughters.

Wish us luck!!!

Bless you Jens for sharing with us.
I’m sure i can’t go wrong & it will be “Simply The Best”

Cheers
Michelle

Just wanted to add a few notes I thought might be useful to others reading the comments. Like a much earlier commenter, I was leery about using volume measures rather than weight measures for something oddly-shaped and unpackable like quartered apricots, and so I managed to find another recipe online with a similar method but weight measures. I ended up cross-pollinating the two. I’ve got three and 3/4 eight-oz jars of perfect, bright-orange-gold, deeply apricot flavoured, jammy-consistency jam, so it obviously worked.

I used 1 kg apricots (weight before stoning) to 700 grammes sugar. Curious to know how this compared to Jens’ recipe, I measured it out and found that I had about 6 cups of quartered fruit and about four and a half 3/4-cup measures of sugar. Following Jens’ method would have meant six 3/4-cup measures of sugar, so my jam had somewhat less sugar. I added Jens’ recommended amount of lemon juice, but followed the other recipe’s instructions to let it sit and macerate, covered, for 18 (!) hours. After 18 hours I had apricots floating in syrup, with the ones on top starting to oxidize to brown. It turned out to make no difference to the colour of the jam.

Boiling was super-straightfoward. I boiled it in a wide-bottomed dutch oven for about 25 minutes, stirred it often but not constantly (it showed no sign of scorching), skimmed it hardly at all. I think that overly-vigilant skimming might be the reason that some commenters have ended up with hard jam—they skimmed half the liquid off! When the bit of foam I did skim started to settle into syrup, I poured the syrup back into the pan. The jam was ready, just as Jens said, when it looked like boiling jam. This wonderfully simple notion had previously worked for my strawberry-rhubarb batch—no messing with candy thermometers or chilled saucers. Just “hey, that looks like jam!”

So, thanks again. The jam is awesome, and I am hooked on jam-making with this method. Next up, sour cherry!