Blueberry jam: the best recipes - how to make blueberry jam at home

You can read about the appearance of the berry, its places of growth and beneficial properties. in the material on our website.

How to prepare berries

The collected fruits are sorted from debris, twigs and leaves. Place the berries in a colander and then place it in a large saucepan of cool water. The water is changed and the procedure is repeated 2-3 more times. The standard method of washing under the tap is not suitable in this case, since the blueberries may fall apart under the pressure of water.

Clean berries are left for 15-20 minutes in a colander, allowing the remaining liquid to completely drain. If desired, you can spread the blueberries in one layer on a paper towel, but, in our opinion, this is unnecessary.

Recipes for making delicious jam

The easiest and fastest option

First of all, boil the syrup. To prepare it, take a glass of water and 7 glasses of sugar. The ingredients are mixed and boiled on the stove for 5-7 minutes. Place 5 cups of blueberries into the boiling solution. The berries are pre-washed, sorted and dried.

Cook the jam over medium heat for a quarter of an hour. Stir the mixture constantly so that the berries cook more evenly, and skim off the foam with a spoon.

While the stove is running, prepare the jars for twisting. They are first washed and then sterilized over steam. In addition to steam treatment, jars can be sterilized in the microwave, oven or dishwasher. Read more details here.

Pack the jam immediately after turning off the heat. Hot jam in jars is covered with lids, and after cooling it is put into the underground or refrigerator.

Five minutes

For this jam you only need berries and sugar in equal proportions. Place the blueberries in a bowl or pan with a wide bottom (you can also use a frying pan with high sides) and sprinkle with sugar. Lightly shake the bowl, cover it with a lid and put it in the refrigerator for 10-12 hours. During this time, the berry will give up a lot of juice, the sugar will partially dissolve, and the blueberry itself will be almost completely immersed in the sweet syrup.

Soaked in their own candied juice, blueberries require very little cooking time, literally 5 minutes after boiling. Five-minute jam, due to the rapid boiling of the berries, retains the maximum amount of vitamins.

Thick jam

Blueberries (1 kilogram) are covered with 1.5 kilograms of sugar, and the berries are crushed with a potato masher. They don’t try too hard, the main thing is that at least 1/3 of the berries have their integrity broken.The pan with the food is set aside for half an hour to allow the juices to separate.

After this, start cooking. To make thick blueberry jam, do not add water to the berries, but cook for 15-20 minutes at the minimum heating power of the burner.

The India Ayurveda channel will tell you in detail about preparing wild or garden blueberry jam.

"Live" jam

To preserve the beneficial substances in the berry, boiling blueberries over fire is completely avoided. It is ground with sugar in equal proportions and frozen. To grind the fruits, use a blender, meat grinder or wooden masher. For freezing, you can use food-grade plastic containers or special disposable freezing containers.

From frozen blueberries

If you collected quite a lot of blueberries, and some of them went into storage in the freezer, then in winter, when you have more free time, you can make jam from frozen berries.

Read about methods and options for freezing blueberries yourself. here.

When making jam, blueberries are placed in boiling sugar syrup without defrosting. It is boiled from 150 milliliters of water and 1.2 kilograms of sugar. You will need 1 kilogram of frozen berries. Cooking time after boiling is 15 minutes.

With gelatin

This jam can be called jam-jelly. It turns out to be very soft in consistency. To prepare, you will need fresh blueberries - half a kilo, 25 grams of edible gelatin, 700 grams of sugar and the juice of half a lemon. Freshly squeezed lemon juice can be replaced with the finished product “Lemon Juice”, sold in stores.

Blueberries are poured with water so that the fruits are completely immersed in the liquid, but do not float in it.Over medium heat, bring the blueberries to a boil and cook for no more than 2 minutes. The ripened berries along with the broth are placed on a sieve. The blueberries are rubbed through a wire rack, and the cake is left to be brewed into tea.

While the blueberry juice is cooling, dilute gelatin powder in two tablespoons of cold boiled water. The gelatin mass is introduced into the slightly cooled berries and everything is thoroughly mixed. Next, add the juice of half a lemon or 2 tablespoons of the finished product. The mass is filtered again to make sure there are no undissolved pieces of gelatin or accidentally introduced lemon seeds.

At the final stage, the jam is packaged in small, clean jars, which do not need to be sterilized beforehand. In this recipe, the workpiece is completely sterilized in a water bath. The details of this process and the time for sterilization of cans of different sizes are described Here.

How to diversify jam

In all the recipes presented, you can combine blueberries with other berries. Wild strawberries, raspberries or blueberries are best. They partially replace the original amount of blueberries.

Ground cinnamon, vanilla sugar or ginger powder are used as spices. When making jam, cinnamon sticks are also placed in the pan, but the spice must be removed before packing into jars.

How to store the workpiece

There are no special secrets for storing blueberry jam. The thermally treated preparation is stored underground or in the basement for no more than 1 year, and live jam is stored in the freezer. The shelf life of frozen products is 8-10 months.

In addition to blueberry jam, delicious marshmallow, most tender puree and cook a variety of compotes.