Glass jars and a preserving pan are the essential kit for making jam, jellies and marmalades. A large heavy based saucepan, suitable for making preserves, will be found in most kitchens. Glass jars can be recycled and sterilised. The smaller the better the glass jar or bottle for storing home-made preserves.
Making preserves can use plenty of shiny stainless steel kitchen gadgets and special tools as part of a kitchen kit for making super jam at home.
Jelly Bag and Stand
A four-legged plastic or stainless steel stand with a calico, nylon or cotton jelly bag strung across provides a fine sieve for making seedless strawberry and raspberry jams. Of use in making jellies, a jelly bag, suspended by a stand, will collect the fruit pulp while allowing the fruit juice to strain through into a bowl.
Preserving Sugar
Preserve making with high-low pectin fruit can use the loose jam approach or making set jams. Making a set jam will require high levels of pectin. Fruits with naturally high pectin content include citrus fruit limes and lemons, berry fruit cranberries, loganberries, red currants and black currants and tree top fruit quinces and apples. With lower pectin fruit, making a set jam requires preserving sugar or jam sugar for a guaranteed high pectin content and good set to the fruit preserve.
Sugar Thermometer
Testing for setting point of a fruit jam can be done by eye and with practice using the saucer test or flake test. Desired temperatures for a set jam or a jelly are different. A Sugar Thermometer or Jam Thermometer takes the guesswork out of setting point. To avoid the thermometer touching the base of the preserving pan rather than the jam only, sugar thermometer can be bought with a handle or clip on to the side of the pan.
Stainless Steel Funnel for Preserves
When the fruit preserve, a jam, jelly or marmalade, has reached setting point, the saucepan can be taken off the heat and rested for up to five minutes before potting into sterilised glass jam jars with lids or preserve covers. Potting up is the final exciting part of making a set jam. A stainless steel funnel or a heatproof plastic funnel will save time in getting the jam into the jam jars plus give a cleaner finish to the finished jam line.
Hydrometer
Transferring jam into jars and bottles can also use the special kitchen gadget the pese syrop or hydrometer. This preserving gadget will tell the cook the amount of sugar in a syrup. Hydrometers are usually made from stainless steel and have a tube marked from zero to 40. When placed in the fruit syrup the tube will move and the higher the hydrometer floats in the liquid, the greater the amount of sugar content.
With a budget to get serious about making fruit preserves, using a jam thermometer, jelly bag, funnel or hydrometer are likely to produce a better set fruit jam.
Susan Morris - Susan Morris, Scottish food and drink business manager, organic gardener, author and editor
