Lovely Homemade Mango jam

in #palnet3 years ago (edited)

Every year at the end of the mango season, we are left with some excess fruit in the house after selling what we could,blessing friends family and neighbors with some and eating our fill, the question is always, what do we do with the rest...

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So this year I decided to try something new in order to make the fruit we have stretch just a little bit further, and making these yummy fresh fruit last just that little bit longer after the season ends.

And one of the ways I did that, was by trying to make a mango jam - something that has strangely never occurred to me to try. And now that I have taken the leap and tried it out, I am left wondering to myself why I didn't try it sooner, because it came out absolutely divine!

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First thing first though - Preparing the fruit in order to make mango jam.

before I could start to make any mango jam, I needed to select the fruits that I wanted to use, then wash and peel them - In my case I had about 20kg of fruit, but please don't be discouraged, this doesn't mean to say that you will need that much fruit to make your own jam, remember I am just trying to work through some excess fruit from a yearly crop.

The beauty of making jam is that this recipe is extremely easy to adapt to any amount of fruit that you use, and simply because it is calculated to one part sugar for every part fruit. Thus if you only have a kilogram of fruit to work with - you will simply adjust the amount of sugar you need to 1 kg.

Of course the size of the batch will then determine your cooking time.

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I for one ended up with about 14 kg of cubed fresh mango, and as such needed to add 14 kg of sugar. This meant that my cooking time would be drastically longer than someone making one small batch for their home.

As above the cubed fruit along with its juice was mixed together with the sugar in a huge pot and placed over low heat on the stove.

Dissolving your sugar into your fruit helps so that the sugar wont return to a crystallized state once the jam has cooked and cooled. If you bring your jam to the boil to fast during the early stages, your end product might end up being a grainy sugary fruit mass in stead of a smooth rich fruity jam.

Once the sugar has completely dissolved you can bring your mixture to the boil, stirring occasionally, however do not leave the pot alone for too long as the jam is prone to boil over and leave you with an extremely difficult mess to clean up.

Testing your jam.

As I stated before, your cooking time will vary drastically depending on the size of the batch that you are preparing, so how do you know that your jam is ready to be bottled?

Here is what I do, I normally place a small saucer into the freezer but I have come to the conclusion that a spoon works just as well and takes a lot less time to chill. I do this when I just start cooking the jam, so that the spoon is ice cold by the time I am ready to test my jam.

Watching the fruit along the process is a crucial step, after some time of cooking the fruit will lose their freshly cut appearance, and turn into a a glossy mass, the fruit pieces will reduce in size and the bubbles from the boiling process will shift from frothy dense bubbles, to more stable individual bubbles that linger on the surface for a but before bursting. It is at this stage that your jam is ready to be tested. You can test your jam as often as you like during this process to make sure that you get the exact consistency that you prefer.

You will test your jam by dropping some of the hot jam from the pot into the ice cold spoon, this will allow your jam sample to cool down immediately and give you an indication of what the jam will be like once it has cooled after bottling. I normally take my finger and swipe the jam in the spoon to one side, if the jam ripples on the surface - I know that my jam is ready.

When you are happy that your jam is ready to be bottled, you can start sterilizing your jars. I do this by cooking my jars as well as their lids for a minute or so in clean water.

When bottling, I place the lids on tightly and then place the bottles upside down - This allows the bottles to create an airlock and seal properly.

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The end result was a divine, golden mango jam, I managed to make enough for the house, and some to gift friends, while also having more than enough to sell at the monthly farmers market.

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Never tasted Mango jam, useful being on a farm with excess. Easy recipe to follow through, you mentioned a great gift to give or sell at farmers markets.

@tipu curate

neither have I before I made it LOL
talking about great gifts - you should send me your postal address, maybe I can send you some?

Really appreciate the offer, sadly we don't have a local post office working as such any longer, the one we do have is in a crappy area! PostNet is available but excessively expensive.

It is the thought that counts, so thanks, enjoy your sweet treat! Great to hear you are back on the farm enjoying home life once again.