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Mixed Berry Jam

(recipe, Linda Ziedrich)


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Ingredients

  1. 2 lb. frozen red currants, thawed
  2. 2 lb. frozen red raspberries, thawed
  3. 2 lb. frozen strawberries, thawed
  4. 7 cups sugar

Steps

  1. In a covered preserving pan — a wide, heavy, nonreactive pan (I use a big Le Creuset pot with sloping sides) — over medium heat, bring the currants and raspberries to a simmer. Uncover the pan, and simmer the fruits about 5 minutes, until they are quite tender (if you use fresh fruit instead of frozen, the simmering will take a bit longer).
  2. Purée the mixture through the fine screen of a food mill set over a large bowl. Briefly mash the strawberries with a potato masher (to break them into pieces, not to obliterate them), and add them to the fruit purée. Stir in the sugar.
  3. Pour half the mixture into the preserving pan. Boil the mixture over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes, until it mounds in a chilled bowl. Ladle the jam into pint or half-pint designated jam or Mason jars, and close the jars. Cook the rest of the fruit mixture in the same way, and fill more jars with the jam.
  4. The jars can then be processed in a boiling-water bath: five minutes if the jars are sterilized first, 10 minutes if they're not.

Note

The red currants in this jam provide abundant acid and pectin for a strong gel. I undercooked my jam a bit to keep the gel on the soft side. Unless your food-mill screen is finer than mine, some seeds will slip through, enough to add a little texture without making the jam unpleasantly seedy. You can cut this recipe in half and cook all the jam at once.