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The Simplest Way to Make and Can Delicious Peach Jam
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May 21, 2024
Peach Jam is one of our favorites and it's a great way to preserve peaches for use all year round. To see the steps for this recipe all written out, go to https://pantrypreparedness.com/how-to-make-and-can-peach-jam/ Get my free label templates at https://pantrypreparedness.com/labels Pantry Preparedness is a trademark of Income School LLC, an Idaho Limited Liability Company
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Well good morning, afternoon, or evening my friends. Welcome to Pantry Preparedness
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Today I want to show you an easy, easy method to make delicious peach jam
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This isn't freezer jam either. This is actual canned, um, cooked jam that we can store and
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save a ton of freezer space by not having to take it up with jam. I love freezer jam. We mostly make
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a strawberry freezer jam. All of our other jams and jellies we tend to make cooked. It's really
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not that hard, so let's go ahead and get into this. For this today we're going to be using this
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Sure Gel Pectin. I like to use the low sugar variety, not necessarily like for health reasons
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although less sugar is healthier, but also because the regular sugar amount of pectin
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ends up tasting really, really, really sweet, at least for me and for my family
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We just don't like how sweet it is. I like to get a little bit more of the fruit flavor
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so we use the low sugar pectin. It's the one in these pink boxes. We keep a ton of this stuff on
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hand because we use it all the time for all of our jams and jellies, even our freezer jam. All right
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the other thing that we're going to do is we're going to use these peaches. We got so many peaches
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this year, and it's part of the reason that I made a bunch of peach jam. We already canned a ton
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and yet we went back for more. Why? Because more peaches continue to ripen, and there are still way
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too many, and so we're sharing a ton with family and friends. But one fantastic way to use peaches
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in addition to just canning the peaches is to make this peach jam. So let's get into this now
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When I make this peach jam, the first thing that I want to do is get everything all laid out. It
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makes just doing the work so much easier. So very first, I'm going to get out the jars I'm going to
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use. For this today, I use these just these one cup smaller jars. In our family, we don't go
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through peach jam quite as fast as we go through some of our other jams. Strawberry jam just gets
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used up super fast. I love raspberry jam. We don't get a lot of that yet, but I'm going to be making
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more and more of that in the future. But the peach jam, we still go through it quite as fast, and so
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the smaller jars make a lot of sense. A lot of times I'll use 12 ounce jars or even pint jars
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depending on the kind of jam that I'm making. So I take the jars, I take the rings, which I store
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on the jars to help just protect that top so that the top of the jar, if it gets chipped, goodbye to
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your seals, the jar's ruined. So I store them that way. It also gives me a place to store the rings
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without having to have some little tote or bin somewhere full of canning rings that we use up
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throughout the year. Basically, when I empty a jar, I take the ring that was on the jar and I, after we
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wash it, we put it back on the jar and I store them upside down to keep dust from settling inside
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the jars when they're out in my garage. All right, so I'm going to take these jars, I'm going to
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bring them in, I'm going to bring the rings in, take the rings off, and I throw them in the sink
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full of nice warm sudsy water. I let them soak for a little bit and then I wash off anything that's
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stuck to them. But other than that, I mean, they should be really clean because I put them away
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clean. While those jars are sitting there in the nice warm sudsy water, I'm also going to fill up
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a pot of water and put it on the stove and get it boiling. We're going to need to wash and then
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blanch these peaches so that the skins will come off easily and we can go ahead and move forward
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with cutting these things up and turning them into jam. With that pot of water on the stove, I'm going
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to go ahead and I'm going to rinse off the jars, set them aside on a towel, get them drying a little
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bit. Then I'm going to fill up one side of my sink with just regular cold tap water. This water is
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going to be used to set the peaches into a little bit before I blanch them. So I'll just dump a bunch
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of peaches into the sink full of water and kind of let them soak. It's going to get some of just the
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dirt and stuff that is on them from existing from being outside and just get a little bit of that
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off. So while they're sitting there in that nice cold water, I'm then going to go ahead and plug
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the other side of the sink and fill it up with cold tap water. But I'm going to dump ice in. This is
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water that we're going to be using in the blanching process and the colder this water is, the better
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because it's going to really help those skins come off after we blanch the peaches. Now, I'm also
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going to turn on my oven to about 200 or 225 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm going to put all of my
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jars onto a baking sheet and I'm going to stick them in the oven. That's going to sterilize the
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jars and it's also going to have them be nice and hot for when I actually put the jam into the jars
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We're still in this state of getting things ready. So I'm going to get out a smaller pot, fill it with water, and I'm going to put whatever lids I'm planning to use for canning into that
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pot of water. I'll get that boiling, but once it's boiling, I'll turn the temperature down to just
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keep it at a nice low simmer. That's going to help soften the seals on these rings, but it's also
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going to sterilize them so that we don't have any bacteria or anything that can possibly be
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on that lid when we put it on. So there's just nothing to grow inside of our food
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Next, we'll also go ahead and get out everything, all the ingredients we're going to need
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when we make this peach jam. I'm going to want a nice big measuring cup. I like to use one of
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these big liquid measuring cups. This is a four cup liquid measuring cup. I'm going to use that
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to put the peaches into after I chop them up so that I know once I have enough for the recipe
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This recipe calls for four and a half cups of finely chopped peaches. So that's filling it up
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and then you can eyeball it from there, but if you want to, you could dump four cups in
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and then measure out another half cup. It's not like super precise, but we want to be as close
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to that four and a half cups as possible because the ratio of fruit to sugar to pectin really
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determines how well your jam sets up. So if you don't want it super runny or you also don't want
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it super duper thick, you want it just right, you want to make sure you measure pretty accurately
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We're also going to want to set aside the right amount of sugar and we're just going to set it
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aside into a bowl. The reason for that is when we add the sugar, most of the sugar, we're going to
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add it to the fruit and we're going to want to add it all at once. We're going to dump it all in at
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one time, not be scooping and measuring it out at that time. This recipe calls for three cups of
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sugar, so let's just measure out three cups of sugar into a bowl that will fit three cups of
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sugar and set it aside for now. We're also going to want a little bit of lemon juice. This recipe
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calls for two teaspoons. That's going to help keep the peaches from browning. We're also going to
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want a little bit of butter or margarine. I use butter, but that's just because I love butter
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Half a teaspoon of butter is going to be plenty, which is a small amount. Those little lines on
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the butter packaging are for a tablespoon, so we only need half a teaspoon, just a little bit of
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butter. It doesn't have to be measured exactly, but what the butter is going to do is help when
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we start boiling this jam. It's going to create a lot of foam and it's really easy to spill over
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if you aren't careful. That foam builds up a lot more than you'd think it would. By putting in the
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butter, it helps reduce the amount of foam. I do recommend doing that whenever you're making
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these jams and jellies. The last thing that I get prepared when I have a minute here is my
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water bath canner. I'm going to fill it up. Because I'm using short jars, I don't have to fill it up
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as high. We just want to make sure we have one to two inches of water above the jars. Recognize
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that when you lower a bunch of jars down into one of these canners, it's going to raise the water
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level. You don't actually need tons of water for jars that are a lot smaller. Great. Now we have
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all those things ready to go. What I'm making here in this video is actually a double batch
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of this jam. I do two batches at a time. It just saves me time because of the amount that I'm
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making. Feel free to double any of these numbers. Also, you don't have to remember all this because
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over at pantrypreparedness.com, I'll put a link in the description of this video, I do have all of
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these steps written out. So this video will really help to visualize what I'm doing. But also you can
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follow along those steps written out there and see all the ingredients that you need
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Alright, the prep is done. I'm going to go with it being done now. So the next thing that we're
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going to do now that hopefully that water on the stove is all boiling, we're going to go ahead and
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start blanching the peaches. I use a strainer like this to scoop the peaches right out of the sink
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and right into this pot of water. I then go ahead and set a timer for 60 seconds. 60 seconds is
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usually just right for peaches that are good and ripe. If you have some that are not quite ripe yet
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you can still get them to peel reasonably well, but sometimes I'll leave them in for an extra 20
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seconds or so. Once that timer goes off, I go ahead and scoop them back out with the strainer and put
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them in to the side of the sink with the ice water. I often end up, depending on how many peaches
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you're doing, I often end up having to add ice several times because we're putting hot peaches
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into this water. It's going to warm it up pretty fast and melt your ice. Keep that water cold. It's
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going to make this work better. I then scoop in another ladle of or another strainer full of
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peaches and put them in. Now, if the water's not at a good rolling boil after you've got the first
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peaches out, let it get back up to a rolling boil. Put a lid on that pot. It's going to help a lot to
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keep that heat in. In fact, I keep a lid on it all the time. I pull the lid off, pour some peaches in
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put the lid right back on. It's going to help keep that water boiling really well so you don't have
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to wait a long time in between little batches. Now that we have some peaches blanched, we're
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going to let them sit in that cold water just long enough so that they cool off to the touch. Then we can go ahead and take those out. We like to put them in a bowl and take them over to another
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part of the counter. Working with a partner here can help a lot because while I'm blanching
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Julie's over there doing some cutting. And sometimes we switch and that's great because
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sometimes it gets monotonous to cut a lot of peaches. And we've gone through now, I think
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7 boxes of peaches this season alone. Now we're going to go ahead and peel the peaches. If the
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peach is good and ripe, that peel will often just come right off. Super easy. If it doesn't come
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right off and we're going to have to sort of peel it off, I actually find it easier to do that
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after cutting the peach. So if it comes off, take it off. Then we'll go ahead and cut the
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peach in half. Pull the pit out. Then I like to use a spoon to kind of scrape out the insides of
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the peach just right around where the pit is. Those fibers, those parts that are kind of hard
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it seems like they might soften up later. They kind of don't and we don't want our jam to be
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real stringy. So I kind of scrape that out just a little bit. It doesn't take long. And then
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and from there, with the peaches halved, I'll set them on this cutting board and I'll just use a
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larger like chef knife and I'll just chop them up into whatever shape you want to. It doesn't
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really matter that much. Just cut, just cut them into reasonably small pieces like you see here
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Now, like I said, if your peaches weren't totally ripe, then after having them and getting the pit
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out, then sometimes I'll even cut the halves in half so they're into quarters. And then it's easy
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to just take the same little paring knife I've been using to cut these peaches in half and just
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sort of peel off the what's left of the skin. Whatever didn't peel off by itself. Then again
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go ahead and dice them up into small pieces. And then I put them right into that measuring cup
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We do this until we get to our four and a half cups. With four and a half cups of peaches
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I'm going to mix in my two teaspoons of lemon juice and then I'm going to pour them right
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into that pot. While the fruit is still cold sitting in that pot, I haven't turned on the
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heat yet, I'm also going to take a quarter cup of the sugar I put in that mixing bowl. Only a
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quarter cup. The rest of it stays. I'm going to take a quarter cup out and I'm going to put it in
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with the fruit. I'm also going to at this point, open up my Sure Gel packet and I'm going to mix
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it in too. Then I'm going to take a spoon, either a spoon or a heat resistant spatula, either one
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and I'm going to mix it all together really well. At this point, once it's mixed in and you don't
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have a bunch of clumps of pectin, then I'm going to go ahead and turn on the heat and we're going
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to turn it all the way up to high and stir constantly until we get it at a full rolling
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boil. At this point, we're talking about it boiling even while you're stirring. It's going
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to take a few minutes to get there. During this process, I keep what's left of the bowl of sugar
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nearby so that once we get to that full rolling boil, we're ready. We can just pour in all the
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rest of the sugar all at one time. We're going to stir in that sugar until it's really good and
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mixed. Once it's good and mixed, now we got to get it back to a full rolling boil. Right when you
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pour it in, it's going to feel like it's still boiling and it's not going to stop. But as you
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mix in that sugar, it's going to slow down that boil and bring it back down to not boiling. It's
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still super hot, but now we need to get it back to that full rolling boil. We have not turned the
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temperature down on the stove at all. I've still left it up at full heat. I'm stirring this. You're
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going to want a spoon or something with a long enough handle that you can stir this without getting burned. I'm also going to have a timer ready for 60 seconds. That's because as soon as
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we get to that full rolling boil, I'm not talking about a few little bubbles. I'm talking about it's
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a rolling boil even while I'm stirring. It's going to take another few minutes to get there. But once
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it's there, we start that timer and we keep stirring for a full 60 seconds while it's at a
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full rolling boil. As soon as that timer goes off, go ahead and turn off your heat. Remove the pot
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from the stove. Get it off the heat. If you have a type of stove, like you have gas, where basically
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once you turn the gas off, the heat stops immediately, you can leave it there on the stove
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if you want to. We'll usually move it over somewhere. Sometimes I'll move it off of that
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burner spot onto a different spot that's cool, or you can just move it onto a hot pad somewhere
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else nearby, depending on just how much space you have in your kitchen. At this point, we want to
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immediately start ladling this jam into the jars. So I'm going to use one of these jar grabbers
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I'm going to pull them one by one out of the oven. I'll pull one out and I will use one of
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these ladles. We love this ladle by the way. It's just nice and deep so we can get a lot in it. We
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use it for canning all the time. We use it for syrup, for like canning peaches and pears, but
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then also of course we use it for jam and jelly. We're going to scoop this in and I'm going to use
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a funnel here as well, a canning funnel, so that we don't get it all over the place. We get most of
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the jam back into one of these jars and I'm going to fill it up. I'm going to fill it up basically
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all the way. I can use a gauge here to gauge the headspace. We want the headspace down at just a
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quarter of an inch. That's just one little step on this headspace gauge. So quarter of an inch
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that's it. Almost to the very top. Once it's filled to that level, we go ahead and we wipe
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the rim of the jar. We go ahead and we put a lid on there. We put a lid in place and then we'll go
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ahead and tighten down a lid, just hand tight. Now we're going to set this aside and we're going to
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go ahead and fill up all of the jars until we've used up all of the jam that's in the recipe. Now
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we're going to go ahead and we're going to take all these jars of jam and we're going to take them to the water bath canner. I like to do this step. In fact, I like to do all of it if possible
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but oftentimes I don't have a full outdoor kitchen at this point. So I don't have all the
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burners and stuff that I would want. So I end up doing a lot inside. But for the water bath part
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especially, I do this outdoors on just a camp stove. This is a Camp Chef two burner stove that
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I have. It works really well. It also gets really hot. So it's able to get that water in that water
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bath canner boiling super fast. We get that up to a really good rolling boil. I set all of these jars
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on the rack and I lower it into the water bath canner. Now I'm going to set a timer for just 10
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minutes for jam. It's going to take about 10 minutes. And as soon as that timer goes off
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I'm going to pull these right back out of the water bath canner. I like to just set them on a
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towel and I let them sit. Once they've cooled to the touch, I will bring them inside. I still set
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them on a towel. At this point, the jars are usually a little bit sticky and stuff. I just
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leave them that way. And I let them cool. I let them sit for a full 24 hours. The next day I'll
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then go and I'll rinse off the outsides of the jars and then I'll stick the labels on once they're
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good and dry and I'll put them away. Now it's important that you test and make sure that your
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jar is actually sealed. It's actually super easy. All we need to do is make sure that the lids popped
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downward. You'll hear these pop and they'll start within just a couple minutes of pulling them out
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of the canner. But you'll start to hear them pop, pop, pop, pop. And if one doesn't pop
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then when you push on the top, it'll want... It'll bounce up and down. If it doesn't bounce
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if it doesn't come up, we know we're good. Now, you don't want to go to your jars that didn't pop
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and start pushing them down. You can artificially make them pop and that doesn't mean they got a
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good seal. You want them to pop on their own. So, you can look at them and you can just kind of
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tap them lightly and see if they have any give in them like that. Just don't go pushing them down
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And that's it. Now, we have jam and you know, they say that you can store it for up to a year
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I've got jam that still is really good. And I can't see anything wrong with it. I can't detect
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any sort of issue with it. That's a few years old. But I'm not a food scientist and so I'm not
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giving you advice. I'm just telling you what we do. When it comes to food safety, it's good to
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take care of yourself. But also when it comes to preparedness, it's good to make sure that you have
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plenty and that we don't waste what we've created. So, make sure you're just using your jams
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and jellies. And every year or 2, make sure that you're adding to what you have so that you can
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replace what you've used up. And you'll always be prepared with delicious fruit. And as well as
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other foods that we can preserve. Which is one of the things we talk about here on this channel
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Food preservation is one of many aspects of preparedness. It's something that we talk about
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here on this channel. But this channel is all about preparedness in general. And all of the
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many different skills and many different products that we should have to ensure that we're prepared
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for whatever it is that life's going to throw at us. If that's something that interests you, I hope you stick around and that we'll see you in our next video
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