Fir cone jam: subtleties of preparation - how to make fir cone jam at home

How and when to collect fir cones

To make jam, you need to collect the raw materials or buy them on the market. They go to the forest for cones in early June, when the spruce trees increase their green mass and produce fruits in the form of green, unopened cones.

Raw materials should be collected away from roads and manufacturing plants. When choosing a mother tree, you should pay attention to its appearance. The trunk should be strong and healthy, and the branches should be completely covered with green needles. It is better not to collect cones from damaged and diseased fir trees.

Young fruits grow at the very edges of the branches. The length of the cones should be no more than 4 centimeters, the color of the fruits should be brown-green.You also need to pay attention to the scales of the cones. They should be pressed tightly to the base. The fruits should be of milky ripeness, and when pressed with a fingernail, they should be pierced quite easily.

Preliminary processing

Whatever recipe for making jam you choose, fir cones must be properly prepared before cooking. To begin with, the fruits are washed under cold running water and then transferred to a pan. To soak the cones, pour a new portion of water so that it completely covers the cone mass. It is advisable that there be 3-4 centimeters more water above the fruits. The pan is put in a cool place for a day. This could be a refrigerator or a crawl space.

After the allotted time, the cones are transferred to a wire rack and the water is drained. At the bottom of the pan you will see a certain amount of sediment - this is resin, so you need to drain the water separately from the fruit.

Recipes for delicious and healthy spruce jam

Cooking in syrup

For a kilogram of cones, take 1 liter of water and a kilogram of sugar. Sugar is combined with water and boiled for 3-4 minutes. The prepared cones are placed in a boiling base and boiled for 1.5 - 2 hours. Periodically remove foam from the surface. It is very convenient to use a ladle for cooking dumplings for this.

During prolonged cooking, the spruce syrup becomes thick and acquires a dark color, and some of the cones open their scales. The fruits become soft and easy to bite.

The hot dessert is packaged in jars. To keep the jam better, the container is first sterilized over steam. This process will not be difficult for you if you familiarize yourself with the selection our articlesdedicated to this topic.

Cooking candied fruits

This method involves initially extracting juice from the cones.To do this, fir fruits are combined with sugar in a 1:1 ratio and mixed thoroughly. Some people advise rubbing sugar into the cones, but this can damage some fruits and the finished jam will lose its aesthetic appearance. The main thing is to ensure that each cone is wrapped in a layer of sugar. This will be enough to extract the juice.

The candied cones are left for 7-8 hours at room temperature. The mass is stirred periodically so that the dissolved sugar drains and the fruits are immersed in a new layer of topping.

After infusion in sweet syrup, the fir cones are put on fire, adding 3 glasses of water for each kilogram of raw material. Cook the jam over low heat for 20 minutes and then let it cool completely on its own. The second boiling is done for half an hour, and then the dessert is immediately put into jars of the required volume.

In addition to spruce cones, pine fruits are also used to make jam. Step-by-step instructions for preparing such a delicacy are presented in our article.

With spruce needles

In addition to cones, you can also collect young green needles in the forest. It is very tender, fragrant, and grows at the very ends of the branches. The collected pine needles are rinsed with water and dried on a sieve. Take 100 grams of spruce greens per kilogram of cones.

Syrup is boiled in a wide basin from a kilogram of sugar and 2 liters of water. When the mixture boils, drop the cones into the solution. Boil the fruits for an hour, remembering to stir. When they reach half-readiness, add spruce greens to the jam. Bring the mixture to full readiness, boiling it over low heat for another half hour.

With dried rose hips

This version of jam is doubly useful. Rose hips additionally enrich it with vitamins.For 500 grams of fir cones, take 100 grams of dried rose hips, 600 grams of sugar and 3 glasses of water, 250 milliliters each.

Rose hips are poured into ½ cup of boiling water and left under the lid for half an hour.

Meanwhile, cook the main syrup by mixing sugar with the remaining water. After the sugar crystals have completely dissolved, the cones are introduced. Boil the spruce fruits for 50 minutes, and then add the rose hips along with the infusion.

Cooking continues at the same pace for another 50 minutes. As a result, the cones will soften and open slightly, and the rose hips will swell and become saturated with syrup.

Spruce jam-honey

The soaked cones are cut into several parts. Then put the slices into a tall jar, for example a three-liter jar, and sprinkle it with layers of sugar. When the container is full, add another 3 tablespoons of sugar on top. The total volume of products is not regulated, but there is no need to skimp on sugar.

The jar is closed with a nylon lid and sent to the windowsill. When exposed to sunlight, the sugar will dissolve, drawing out all the beneficial substances from the cones. To make the process go faster, the container is shaken periodically. After a day, the cones are filtered through cheesecloth, and the syrup is sent to the stove.

Boil the jam-honey until thickened, about 15 minutes. The remaining cones are dried or withered in an electric dryer, and then used to treat the throat, slowly chewing the pieces. Thus, a kind of candied spruce fruit is obtained. Waste-free production!

Syrup is also made from spruce. It is prepared from cones, shoots and needles. Detailed article on this topic here.

The Poddubny family in their video offers an option for making jam from pine cones, but this method is also quite applicable for preparing spruce cones

How to store spruce cone jam

This dessert is usually prepared in small quantities, and for the treatment and prevention of colds it should always be on hand. Therefore, spruce preparations are usually stored in the refrigerator. If cool space is limited, then jars of jam are put underground or in the basement.

Provided that the jars and lids are pre-sterilized, this dessert can be stored for up to 1.5 years. However, it is recommended to replenish stocks of medicinal jam annually during the growing season of young cones.

If you are interested in jam made from coniferous trees, then we invite you to familiarize yourself with a selection of cooking recipes jam from larch cones and its needles.