Nectarine Jam
I’ve never made jam before. There, I said it.
Making jam and canning is definitely something that I have wanted to do; in fact, it’s my goal every year!
My biggest barrier with both jam and canning is the insane amount of sugar used and the fact that when canning, you have to be exact—no recipe modification.
My mother-in-law is terrific at getting things done. She doesn’t get stuck in analysis paralysis or get hung up over certain ingredients like I do. It is a bit of a relief not to be the one scouring the internet for recipes, especially ones that tick my mental nutritionist boxes. She finds a recipe and gets it done!
Her tree in town is completely loaded with NECTARINES! I can hardly believe having such a yummy stone fruit in harsh central Oregon. There it is, though, with five gallons of nectarines.
She came for a visit, and we tackled processing them.
The great thing about Lori is that she freezes stuff. Freshly baked cookies—straight to the freezer. Portioned out brownies—freezer. Jam or apple butter, freezer! No canning is necessary, which also means no stressing about recipe exactness or sterilization of everything. It made it easy to tackle turning so many nectarines into jam!
As it turned out, the nectarines actually went a long way and made a lot of jars of jam!
Here is what we did:
9 cups of diced nectarines with their skins
3 cups of sugar
1 packet of low or no-sugar pectin from the store
We brought this to a rolling boil for a minute, and then after it cooled, we blended it a tiny bit so there wouldn’t be large lumps. Using a potato masher, we discovered, wasn’t enough to get it lump-free. Finally, we decanted into jars and put them in the freezer, well, all but one of course!
It worked so well that the next day, we did another batch the same way, but we did 1.5 cups of sugar because it was plenty sweet at the recommended low sugar amount. We found that most recipes called for MORE cups of sugar than of fruit. Yuck! I stuck all of this batch in the freezer, so I don’t know if it set up properly, oops. Time will tell.
As it cooled, the jam turned this brilliantly bright rich pink from the skins.
We have so many gorgeous jars of homegrown nectarine jam in our freezer and I definitely feel more confident doing projects like this in the future! It is so satisfying, from processing to tasting! Thanks, Lori!
