Jam Receipe
Jam Receipe
Lots of fruits are spoiled and could be "recycled" in a very simple way:
Just about any fruit and many vegetables can turn into Jam. Green and overripe states of the fruits can add interesting variations.
The fruits mass is cleaned from seed, shells and leaves and cut into small pieces.
Sugar is added in about the same quantity as fruits: white surgar rather less, brown sugar rather more.
The mixture is stirred cooked on high flame until its concentrated enough. Consider that the consistency becomes more solid after cooling. So test while cooking by looking at drops falling from a spoon. When they become bigger, it might be the point. If it was not, you can heat up again and go on cooing.
Then the jam is filled hot into jars with metal cover, leaving some air on top. After closing the cover, stirr to heat up the air and open the cover quickly to let the air pressure out. This guarantees that there will be a vacuum after cooling down. Then keep the jars with cover down and observe them about a week. The cover has do be bent in. If its straight or bent out, cook the jam again to sterilize and try closing another time.
The basic method of simply evaporating water until reaching consistency has the disadvantage that cooking a long times means a loss in taste and nutrition quality. So consider the following solutions:
Use a strong cooker, because the more energy you put into the jam, the quicker the water will evaporate (without increasing the temparature really) the less taste you loose.
You can use jelly (agar agar, a natural substance) to thinken the jam. It adds some "elastic" consitency that may be liked or not.
Most fruits bring some quantity of a substance (pectin) that causes the thikening. It is connected to the sour part. So using green fruits or adding lemmon or apple helps.
Some bacteria survive 100Celsius but not a pH lower than 4.5. So keep the jam sour enough then cooking for 2 minutes makes it infinally storable. Cooking at only 80C for 10minutes may be better, but not so easy.
Papaya: