 Gems, jellies, and preserves can add zest to your family meals. They furnish an accent of color and flavor, and they provide a good way to use all those surplus fruits. In this training module, you'll learn to preserve quality fruit products in your own home. Hi, I'm Roxy Denstahl with the Cooperative Extension Service of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This session will provide the necessary steps for making gems and jellies. There are six different types of fruit products with many similarities. All are made of fruit and sugar, and all are gelled to some degree. But while most of us use the terms gems and jellies interchangeably, there is a difference. Jelly is made from fruit juice. A jelly should be clear, sparkling, and hold its shape. Jam is made from crushed or ground fruit, cooked in a high level of sugar. Jam tends to hold its shape, but is generally less firm than jelly. Fruit butter is made by cooking fruit pulp down to a thick brown sauce. Alaska Highbush Cranberries make an excellent fruit butter. Marmalade is a thick jelly with pieces of fruit and peel suspended in the gel. Marmalades are usually made from citrus fruits. A conserved is a jam-like product made from mixtures of several fruits. A true conserved contains nuts and raisins. And finally, preserves are whole fruits or large pieces of fruit in a thick syrup. Preserves have a very high sugar content. The equipment that's needed for canning gems and jellies is a water bath canner with a rack to keep the jars off the bottom of the container. You'll need a deep kettle to make your jelly or jam in. A jar lifter to lift the jars in and out of the hot water. Of course, you'll need jars with two-piece rings and lids. A spoon for stirring. You'll need some cheesecloth or a jelly bag for straining fruit. A canning funnel. A ladle. Towels, hot pads and paper towels for cleaning the top of the jars. You may need a wire whisk to get rid of the lumps in your pectin and either a candy thermometer or spoons for testing the gel of your product. And the final thing is a timer. Proper amounts of four ingredients. Fruit, pectin, acid and sugar are needed to make a gelled fruit product. First, let's talk about the fruit. Fruit provides a flavoring for your jelly, so selection and handling are critical to success. Choose top quality fruit that is slightly underripe or barely ripe. For apples and other hard fruits, add just enough cold water to cover the fruit in the kettle. For berries and grapes, use enough water to prevent scorching. Excess boiling tends to destroy the pectin, the flavor and the color. Commercial juice is clear and makes a nice product when it's finished. If you boil your own fruit to get the juice, your final product may have a bit of a cloudy appearance. The cloudiness is the natural pectin in the product. In the production of commercial fruit juice, pectin is filtered out. Remember that you don't have to use fresh fruit. You can use frozen juice from the store. Frozen juices and fruit punches also work well for making jelly. Pectin is a natural carbohydrate that causes jelly to gel. It's found in varying amounts in different fruits. Slightly underripe fruit contains more pectin than fully ripe fruit. Many recipes call for skins and cores as pectin is concentrated in these areas. How does pectin work? It forms a sort of a net within the product to trap bubbles of juice and sugar. That's what gives jelly its form. Pectin is available commercially in liquid or powdered form. Each recipe calls for a certain type of pectin, either powdered or liquid. Use the form that is called for in the recipe. Do not substitute as this may affect the outcome of the product. The type of pectin also determines when it should be added. Liquid pectin is added early in the process. Liquid pectin is added as a very last ingredient before the product is canned. Tart apples, gooseberries, currants, concord grapes, sour plums, cranberries, and citrus fruit all contain considerable amounts of natural pectin. Fruits that are low in pectin include apricots, cherries, our strawberries here, pineapple, peaches, and rhubarb. There are new pectins on the market that say no sugar needed. They make an excellent jelly with a strong fruit flavor. However, there are specific instructions that must be followed. Always refer to the instructions that come with your product. The acid used to make jelly, such as lemon juice, adds to the flavor and helps with the gel formation. Underripe fruits contain more acid than ripened fruits. Sugar also helps with the gel formation. It serves as a preserving agent and improves the flavor of your jelly product. Light corn syrup can be used to replace some of the sugar in a recipe. Without added pectin, one fourth of the sugar can be replaced with corn syrup. If powdered pectin is used, one half of the sugar can be replaced. If liquid pectin is used, two cups of the sugar can be replaced with syrup. Honey can also be used to replace sugar, but be sure to use a light, mild flavored honey. In recipes without added pectin, honey can replace one half of the sugar. If pectin is added, two cups of honey can replace two cups of sugar in most recipes. In small recipes, three fourths to one cup of sugar can be replaced by honey. Once you've gathered your ingredients, the fruit, pectin, acid, and sugar begin collecting equipment and supplies. A large kettle is essential for making jelly. You need a kettle of at least 8 to 10 quarts capacity. It permits the jelly mixture to come to a full rolling boil without boiling over. You'll need a large metal spoon, a clock, a watch, or a timer to check your times. You'll need a cooking thermometer. When making jelly from fresh fruit, you'll want to use cheesecloth or a jelly bag to strain the juice. To store your jam or jelly, you need jars, lids, and rings. This is a two-piece jar system that the lid has a ring of rubber on the inside. The metal ring screws the lid onto your jar and holds it in contact. The jar lids must be replaced each time you make a jam or a jelly. The rings may be used over and over again as long as they're in good shape with no rust. Rust creates a barrier that may keep the jar from sealing completely. Boiling jars can be reused as well. To check the condition of the jar, run your finger around the top. Check for chips or a crack. A chip or a crack on the top of the jar or rust on the ring may keep it from sealing. So check your jars carefully. For the boiling water canning process, you'll need a second large kettle for processing the jars. A jar funnel is useful for filling the jars and a jar lifter is necessary for moving boiling hot jars. In preparation for jelly making, sterilize the jars. Place your jars in boiling water to sterilize them. Anything that's processed for longer than 10 minutes doesn't require sterilizing the jars in advance. The 10 minutes of processing time will kill any microbiological activity that's in the jar. So if your recipe calls for 10 minutes of processing time, you can simply use clean, worst jars. Most jam and jelly recipes, however, suggest shorter cooking times so jars should be sterilized. The flat lids should also be prepared with a small amount of water. Always follow manufacturer's instructions. My instructions say have the water simmering, drop the lids in, bring it close to a boil, then turn the heat off. Keep the lids in the warm water to keep the ring of rubber soft. This will aid in the sealing process. With all your supplies at hand and the jars sterilized, you're ready to begin the process of jelly making. There are two types of jellies. Those that are made with added pectin and those made without it. The use of commercial pectin simplifies the jelly making process and yields more jelly per volume of juice. When you boil it longer, you concentrate the juice and it gels, but it results in less jelly. If you choose to use pectin, it will be faster and the jelly point is easier to determine. Jelly made without added pectin contains less sugar and has a fruitier taste. To prepare the fruit, we're going to cut, we're using apples today, we're going to cut them into small pieces, don't peel them, don't cut the seeds out, leave the cores in, we're going to put them into a saucepan. Now one thing to be careful about is if you have any bruises, make sure that you cut those bruises out because they will flavor your apple at the end. I'm going to cut up all my pieces and I'm going to put them in a flat bottom saucepan and add cold water. For apples and other hard fruits, we're going to add up to a cup of water per pound of fruit. If you're doing berries or grapes, you only use enough water to keep it from scorching. Cook until soft for apples, that's about 20 to 25 minutes, and grapes and berries only about 10. Don't overcook because it destroys the pectin, the flavor and the color. Once you've got it cooked, your apples are soft, you want to pour everything into a damp jelly bag or strain it through cheesecloth. If you're using the long boil method without added pectin, your juice goes directly from here into the pan to cook. Be sure to use the recommended recipe for the long boil. For instance, one of my recipes says to take 4 cups of apple juice, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and 3 cups of sugar, stir well. Boil over high heat until it sheets from a spoon or if it's about 8 degrees over the boiling point of water. Then follow regular recommendations for canning. Today we're going to demonstrate jelly making because it's a little bit more difficult to prepare than some other jelly products. Following your recipe, prepare enough fruit for one batch of jelly or use commercial juice. Increasing the size of jelly recipes is not recommended because it may inhibit the jelly. In this example we've added 5 cups of cranberry juice, 5 cups of cranberry juice and a half a cup of lemon juice to the pan. We're going to use powdered pectin so we're going to open our powdered pectin and put it in the product. We always use powdered pectin before you've even turned the heat on. I'm going to use a whisk to make sure we get all the lumps gone. The low sugar variety of pectin is especially difficult to dissolve. In most cases, mixing a low sugar pectin with just a small amount of sugar can also help break down those lumps. Always follow the manufacturer's instructions. We're going to start the boiling process by turning on our stove to high. Jelly requires a high heat to gel. When your juice first begins to boil, you can stir down the bubbles. When the juice reaches a rolling boil, you'll no longer be able to stir it down. Cook at a rolling boil for one minute, time this process using a watch or a timer, then add your sugar all at once, stir the sugar into the juice mixture and boil it hard for one more minute. Again time the process, wait until it comes to a full rolling boil again before you start your timer. You'll notice that the volume increases dramatically when you add the sugar. A large kettle is necessary to keep it from boiling over. Stay close, stir frequently and watch the pot. Once you add the sugar, it can burn very easily. As your mixture boils, you will begin to see a lot of foam. Some recipes instruct you to add one fourth teaspoon of butter to the product to help stop the foaming process. This is optional. If you add too much butter, your jelly will have an unwanted butter flavor. Well, we're just starting to boil, so we're going to wait a little while until the process is ready for the sugar. So I'm going to watch this pot until the juice comes to a full rolling boil. I'll be back in a minute. Okay, I've got a full rolling boil, so I'm going to add in my sugar all at once. It's all measured, and as you see, it knocks out that full rolling boil pretty quickly. Now, once we've stirred in the sugar, we only need to boil it about one minute. Once it reaches that full rolling boil again, you can see that the sugar needs to dissolve and it needs to start boiling again. This kind of milky right now tells you that the sugar hasn't dissolved. As you can see, it really increases the volume. So I'm going to bring it back up to the point that it's at a full rolling boil, and then you can see what it looks like. As you can see, I've got a nice rolling boil. Lots of foam right now, but it's boiling just exactly like we want it. We stirred in our sugar, and now we come back up to a full rolling boil, so I'm going to check my clock, and I'm going to boil it one minute. Now, to make sure that I'm hitting the gelling point, there's one of three different methods that you can use. You can put a small amount of your jelly mixture into a bowl and put it in the freezer, and in just a minute it'll cool off and you can poke at it and you can see that it's gelled. You can dip a cool metal spoon into the boiling jelly mixture. When the two drops, it drips, drips, drips, and then it begins to come off in two drops, and then it sheets off the spoon. We know that the jelly is done. Some people like to use a candy thermometer and check the temperature. The gelling point is eight degrees above the boiling point of water, which is about 220 degrees here. So you take 212 and you add eight to it and get the boiling point. Now when your jelly mixture reaches the gelling point, turn off the heat and prepare to fill the jars. We're not quite there yet, but I'm going to boil it just a little bit longer. We've got about another 20 seconds. Now our minute is up, and as you can see, we've got quite a lot of volume here. This is why you need that extra deep pan. So let me take this out, set it to the side, and we're going to test it. And see it's just getting that long gelling point that tells me we are gelled. So I'm now going to let my foam die down. I've turned my heat off, and we're going to prepare to fill the jars. Now our jelly has finished. It's all gelled. Time to put it in the jar. And the first thing I'm going to do is to scoop that foam off the top. The foam is not visually appealing, but it doesn't hurt the product. As you can see, it's just another, it's just a little bit of trapped in air. It'll make your jar be not quite as pretty when it's sitting on the shelf. My family loves this part. This is what goes on the biscuits the next morning for jelly, for breakfast. So I guess I'll be making hot biscuits tomorrow morning. Okay. Now that I've got most of this gel off, the foam off, I'm going to set this aside, and now I'm going to pack my jars. When you're working with a hot sugar syrup, it's important to keep your jars hot too. The product is hot and the jars are not. The jars may break down from heat stress. It's a good idea to have your jars in the water that you've sterilized them in until you're ready to fill the jars with jelly. And I just pulled these out of my canner, as you can see my canner is working on the back of the stove, and I'm just going to fill this up. Before filling the jars, we want to make sure that we're going to use the spoon to scoop off all that nasty foam that we don't like as well, and we're going to use our ladle to fill up our jars within an eighth of an inch of the top. One of my shortcuts is I use a plate or something underneath these jars to keep me from spilling all over the top of my stove, and it makes it hard to clean up. Now, you can't always tell how high it is. You have to move it over so you can tell. And remember, you're using a really hot product and hot jars, so be very careful. Okay, now I'm going to get the rest of these jars all filled up, and it's ready to go. As you can see, the jelly has a beautiful color. That's one of the reasons that we really like to make jelly. It's that clear, almost jewel-like look. It really is pretty. So as you can imagine, almost any juice would work nicely for the product. I sometimes use frozen juices because they're so colorful. Can you imagine taking this jelly and putting it in somebody's Christmas basket? All this beautiful red jelly. A lot of people make jelly out of things that are unusual. One of the things that I've made before has been a jelly that's made out of peppers. And it has a beautiful green color, but hot peppers, the hotter the better. A little bit of spice and a little bit of sweet makes for a nice flavor. Now, we have all this ready. I'm going to turn my lids off and get ready to do the tops. The first thing I'm going to do, ooh, that's hot, clean the edges. This one could use just a little speck more juice. Don't quite have that eighth of an inch. As you can see, the canning funnel does a really nice job of keeping the edges clean. My jar lids on. Again, hot jars, hot jelly, hot lids. The only thing that's really cool is our rings. They should be finger tight to hold the lid against the jar. Now, you don't want to over tighten the ring as it'll compromise the seal. Jelly can be stored in the refrigerator after the jar is cool. As long as it's gelled, it's safe in the refrigerator. Because it has a high sugar content, there's less microbiological activity, but mold will still grow in the refrigerator. By processing the jelly using the boiling water canning method, you can ensure that your jelly will be kept at room temperature, can be kept at room temperature for up to a year. So we're ready to go in the canner. Now that my jars are ready to go, I'm going to place them in the boiling water bath. Again, we have a hot canner, boiling water, hot jars, and hot jelly. So all I have to do now is wait five minutes. It's boiling again, so I need to set my timer for five minutes and they'll be ready to go. So I'll come back in a minute and you can see the finished product. Then we'll make some jam. Jams are simple to make. They require cooking down a crushed fruit until it thickens. Some require added pectin, others have enough natural pectin for jelling. Again, always use an approved recipe. For our demonstration today, we're going to use blueberry jams that feature our Alaska wild berries. The recipe requires four and a half cups of blueberries, half a teaspoon of cinnamon, and a half a teaspoon of clove, the lemon juice from one lemon, the zest from one lemon, and seven cups of sugar. We also need six ounces of liquid pectin. We're going to open our liquid pectin and I've cut the tops off of them and they're standing up right in a cup or a glass. It makes them, they're particularly difficult to cut. So make sure you're ready when you put everything in. We're going to put our blueberries, the lemon juice, the zest. Lemon and blueberries have a really nice flavor together. And then we're going to add our cinnamon and cloves and our sugar. Now, I'm going to turn my pan on and stir it. At first, we didn't put any liquid in here. The only thing we're going to do is wait for our sugar to liquefy and the juice to come out of the berries. So we're going to have to stir it pretty closely here at first to make sure we don't burn anything. As you can see, lots of sugar and your berries. No liquid yet. Again, a high heat is necessary, you can get that liquid out of there. So stir it quite a bit at first to make sure that you don't have any trouble with it. Smells great. Blueberries just remind me of summertime. They have a heavenly odor and particularly when you add the cinnamon and cloves with them, my goodness, they make a wonderful jam. This is one of my family's favorite jams. So now you can see, look, we've got liquid already. So now that I've got it beginning to liquefy a little bit, it's a very simple jam to make. All I'm going to do is let it boil, let it come to a simmer, and I'm going to simmer it for about five minutes. See, got that liquid ready to go. Now I can leave it alone. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to get my jars ready and they'll be ready to when my jelly is ready or my jam is ready to go. So the first thing I'm going to do, I have my simmering pan back here. I'm going to turn it off and drop my flats in so they'll be ready to go. The next thing I need to do is to make sure my jars are hot. I don't have to sterilize them because that my processing time is 15 minutes. Since it's longer than the 10 minutes allowed, I don't have to worry about them being sterilized. But it is still important that the jars be hot. If you take hot jam and put it in a cool jar, you could get some heat stress on the jar. So my jam hasn't quite gotten to the boiling point yet. Not simmering, but it smells good and that's a good thing. So what we're going to do is, y'all give me a little bit of time to bring it up to the right temperature and to simmer it for five minutes and then I'll be back and we'll package this jam. Our jam has simmered for about five minutes and it smells heavenly. So we're going to turn the heat off and allow the foam to go down. And we're going to add our liquid pectin. Six ounces is what's required for this recipe, which is two of the packages from a container. Now the pectin is added in the last thing before it goes in the canning jar. This particular recipe doesn't have a lot of foam, so it's all ready to process. My jars just came out of the canner where they are nice and hot and all I'm going to do is now to fill them up. Again I'm using a canning funnel and that canning funnel helps keep the edge of my jars nice and clean and I'm going to fill them up within a quarter of an inch of the top. And our Alaska blueberries make a really nice product. This particular recipe comes from our Alaska Wild Berry Book. If you don't have a copy of it, be sure to drop by your extension office and pick one up. My jar rims, my jar lids are ready to go. They've been heating in the water until they're nice and soft. These can make such a mess in your kitchen because they stain everything. I always laugh about in the summer, I always have blueberry hands. My hands can tell that they've been picking blueberries. Lemon juice, that helps kind of knock those blueberry stains off. I'm close to the top, I'm not sure I'm going to get a full jar out of this one. Put that little bit in there and this will save for eating in the next few days. My lids are ready. I'm going to clean the top. If something as simple as a stem or a seed might be on the outside and it will keep it from sealing. We want to make sure we get this all ready to go. They're ready to go into the canner for processing. Depending on how much you put in the canner, it may stop it from boiling. My two little jars didn't make a big difference. I'm going to go ahead, I'm listening to it, it's coming back to a boil again. So I'm going to set my timer and I'm going to wait for about 10 minutes and it'll be ready to go. So I'll come back in a minute when the jars are all finished and we'll label them. Does the boiling water canning method work? The one-quarter inch of room that we left at the top of the jar gives us a very small cushion of air. As we heat the filled jelly jars in boiling water, the air expands and it seeps out from underneath the rim. When the product cools, the air at the top of the jar shrinks and that creates a vacuum within the jar. The secret to canning is sealing the jar so that no microorganisms can enter. A deep pot will work for the boiling water canner and the pot should be filled with hot water. When all the jars are in place, one inch of water should cover the tops of the jars. Place a rack in the bottom of the pan to prevent the direct contact with the heat source. If no rack is available, you can always use jar rings. Direct contact between the heat source and the jars can cause heat stress and crack the jars. A jar lifter will help you move the boiling hot jars without getting burned. Now we've had our jars in here. They've been placed in the hot water. We've got the water boiling. They've been processing for 15 minutes. So now what we're going to do is to pull them out of there. Our jams require a slightly longer time for processing because they're thicker. You know our jelly that we just made a minute ago only required about five minutes of processing but our jam requires 15. Their thicker takes longer for the heat to get through to the center of the jar. Heat penetration is the key. We want the jelly or jam to be heated evenly to the center of the jar. Now if you live at a higher altitude, you may want to check with your local extension office to find out what that proper amount of processing is. Higher altitudes require longer processing times. As you can see, I've removed my jars from the canner. I have my blueberry jam and my cranberry jelly sitting here on the cabinet. I put them on a towel and I'm going to allow them to sit here for about the next 12 hours and cool off completely. When your jars first come out of the kettle, the jar rings may be loose and the lids are probably going to be loose. Don't bother them. Allow them to cool off naturally. As the jars cool, the vacuum will form and you'll hear a nice little ping when the jar seals. Now we're going to check our seals but it's too quick to do it on these. So we're going to look at some that I did yesterday. So the first thing we're going to do is to look. Each one of your jars should have a slight concave on the top of the jars. Look at this one. It doesn't have a concave part. It's poking up. Okay, so let's listen. These have sealed. You can hear that clear ringing sound. Tells me that the jars are in good shape and they're completely sealed. Now listen to this one. Hear that dull sound? That tells me this jar hasn't sealed. So what I'm going to do is take this jar and put it in the refrigerator and use it first. Now as for the other jars, I'm going to mark them with the product. This is Seminberry Conserve. And I'm going to put the date so I'll know when I process them. Be sure to include the date, the name of the product, and the processing time. So what happens if your jelly fails to jail? Happens to the best of us some time. If your jelly fails to jail, it's either because there was not enough pectin present or because some other factor kept the pectin from doing its job properly. These factors might include inaccurate measuring, insufficient cooking, or overcooking, or a doubled recipe. Re-cooking may remedy the situation. If it doesn't, use the jelly as a pancake syrup, or a waffle syrup, or spoon it over ice cream. Now if you really want to make this into a jelly, then what you do is to pick up the publication called Remaking Runny Jelly and Jam from your extension office. We also have an excellent publication on using your Alaska wild berries that our spice blueberry jam recipe came from. Or be sure to pick up the So Easy to Preserve, which is our all-purpose reference. Now we hope you've enjoyed this training module on making jams and jellies. Visit our website for recipes and additional publications. Happy jamming!