Gooseberry Jam
Preparation time
Cooking time
Total time
This is a easy all in one jam to make when gooseberries are in season. It is so easy to turn fresh fruit into jam using preserving sugar which has added pectin. A great idea when you have been to a pick your own fruit farm and picked too much fruit to eat or when seasonal fruit is keenly priced in the supermarkets.
Marissa: www.marissa.co
Recipe type: Jam
Cuisine: British
Servings: +-600ml
Ingredients
- 500g gooseberries, topped and tailed
- juice of ½ lemon
- 500g jam sugar or preserving sugar
- 200ml cold water
Method
- Sterilise your jars for more information see Notes.
- Place the gooseberries, lemon juice, jam or preserving sugar and 200ml water in a medium pot, add a sugar thermometer to the pot.
- Place the pot onto the stove top and on a very low heat bring the mixture to a slow simmer.
- Allow the mixture to simmer gently and stirring often until the thermometer reaches the jam stage (100 degrees).
- From the slow simmer to reaching the jam stage will take about 45 minutes.
- The fruit should have almost dissolved with just a few larger pieces of gooseberries suspended in the jam syrup.
- If you don't have a sugar thermometer you can use a few small plates which you freeze and every 10 minutes add a teaspoon of the mixture to the cold plate, allow the syrup to cool and pull the back of the spoon through the mixture. If the jam stands proud on either side and crinkles up the centre it is ready.
- Sterilise a small ladle in boiling water and spoon the mixture into the size jars you want to use.
- I like to use a range of smaller 100ml and 250ml jars so I can serve scones for 2 or make a tart with the larger jars.
- Pop a wax seal over the top of the jam (or a circle of greaseproof paper works just as well).
- The jam will keep for up to 6 months, but once opened refrigerate and eat within a few weeks.
Tips
Sterilising Jars
My preferred method of sterilising jars is by washing thoroughly in hot soapy water with a drop of optional Milton steriliser added to the jar.
I add a little water to the washing up liquid and the steriliser and close the lid. Shaking the jar and emptying the soapy suds and rising well.
If you have used Milton steriliser don't spray your clothes as it will bleach them.
Then place the jars onto a baking sheet and turn the oven onto120C degrees or gas mark for 5 minutes. I tend to leave them in oven until I am ready to bottle the jam.
Even though the fruit is weighed out the water content of the individual fruit may differ, which will yield a different amount of jam. I tend to wash and sterilise more jars than I need. That way if the mixture makes more jam you have the jars ready, if it makes less, you can cool and keep the jars for your next jamming session.
My preferred method of sterilising jars is by washing thoroughly in hot soapy water with a drop of optional Milton steriliser added to the jar.
I add a little water to the washing up liquid and the steriliser and close the lid. Shaking the jar and emptying the soapy suds and rising well.
If you have used Milton steriliser don't spray your clothes as it will bleach them.
Then place the jars onto a baking sheet and turn the oven onto120C degrees or gas mark for 5 minutes. I tend to leave them in oven until I am ready to bottle the jam.
Even though the fruit is weighed out the water content of the individual fruit may differ, which will yield a different amount of jam. I tend to wash and sterilise more jars than I need. That way if the mixture makes more jam you have the jars ready, if it makes less, you can cool and keep the jars for your next jamming session.
Recipe by Marissa's Recipes & Ideas at https://www.marissa.co/gooseberry-jam/