21 Jan Thu 2010
Manufactured Jams versus Hand Made Jams
Making a nice batch of Strawberry Jam today. The kitchen smells like heavenly summer, despite the steel-gray skies and ice all over the trees and grass! A hot cup of coffee and I'm set...
Our jam is called SoftSet (c). That's a name I made up to describe jam without pectin. Here's some history: pre-world wars, housewives and cooks didn't have the commercial pectin that is overused today. To set a jam, they could choose to either cook it down until the natural pectin became activated, or they could make their own liquid pectin by boiling pippin apples or citrus rinds.
In our cannery, we boil jam until SoftSet occurs. That way, excess water leaves the fruit, leaving a more intense fruit flavor (the same reasoning for drying fruit!). Another plus: there is much less sugar in a pectinless Soft Set jam. A typical manufactured jam uses a ratio of 90 lbs. sugar or corn syrup to 30 lbs. fruit. Even some brands that boast home-made goodness from OH, KY, and PA do this - I've toured their canneries!
Our SoftSet jam, without additional pectin, is a cleaner, more natural product that requires 12 cups of fruit to 9 cups of granulated cane sugar. The only other ingredient is organic lemon juice! Pretty simple, time-consuming, but it tastes pure. Large manufacturers cannot risk such a simple recipe because they use the sugar, preservatives, corn syrup, and additives to make every jar taste exactly the same. The additives compensate for the fact that not every field of berries has the same amount of rain, nutrients, soil conditions, sunshine, etc. I prefer to enjoy the rich flavor of natural fruits, the way we were intended to!