Plum is a popular fruit crop that was developed by crossing blackthorn and cherry plum. This experiment was carried out by breeders and since then gardeners have been actively growing
garden plum. Its fruits can be eaten fresh, but the jam from them has an unusually rich taste and aroma.
Plum is a healthy and extremely tasty product. Its calorie content is only 42 Kcal per 100 g, but at the same time, the fruits are quite sweet, with a pronounced aroma. Plums are rich in vitamins, fiber, valuable trace elements, antioxidants. They are eaten fresh, used as a filling for pies. From ripe fruits, you can cook very tasty and aromatic jam. Eating it boosts immunity and helps fight colds.
The rutin contained in plums is not destroyed during heat treatment, so the jam remains useful for the cardiovascular system even after prolonged cooking. You can prepare the blank in different ways, but in all cases, the plum delicacy turns out to be unusually tasty.
Jam, cooked according to the classic recipe
Classic plum jam turns out to be thick, dense and tasty. To prepare it, you need a minimum set of ingredients:
- plums - 1 kg;
- sugar -1 kg;
- half a glass of water.
Sort the plums, rinse, remove twigs and seeds. To remove the seeds, the fruit must be cut in half. If the plums are ripe, you can even do without a knife and take out the seeds with your hands. To make jam, you need ripe, but not overripe fruit. It is better to throw away rotten specimens right away so that the jam does not ferment.
Put the halves of the plums in a bowl or a wide saucepan and cover with sugar. Cookware made of stainless steel, aluminum and copper basins are well suited for cooking jam. The jam can burn in enamel pots.
Cover the plums with sugar and let it brew for 5-8 hours. During this time, the fruits should start juice. Put the dishes on the stove, pour water into it and cook the jam for 30-40 minutes over low heat, stirring occasionally. This should be done with a wooden spatula or spoon and very carefully so that the halves of the plums do not boil over. During the cooking process, you also need to remove the foam.
It is very easy to check the readiness of the jam. To do this, dip a wooden spoon in it and drip on a saucer. If the drop keeps its shape and does not spread, this means that you can remove the pan or basin from the stove.
Pour the ready-made jam into sterile jars of small volume if long-term storage is expected. You can sterilize containers with steam. To do this, hold the jars over boiling water for 5 minutes. It is convenient to use a special nozzle for a pan with a round wide opening for the neck of the can. You can fry glass containers in the oven by placing the jars on the wire rack, after turning them upside down. But it must be borne in mind that the temperature should be raised gradually. First, you can set the oven to 50 ° C, and after a few minutes increase the temperature to 100 ° C and sterilize it for 10 minutes.
Close the jam with sterile nylon or metal lids with screw threads and put in a cool place. Serve a treat for tea, and also use as a filling for pies and other baked goods.
Plum jam "five minutes"
The five-minute plum jam has a denser consistency. This recipe is ideal for those who do not like long-term cooking due to lack of time or because of the desire to keep all the vitamins in the fruit. To prepare a "five-minute" you will need:
- plums - 2 kg;
- sugar - 2 kg.
Rinse the plums, sort them, put them on a flat surface to dry, and then cut or divide them into halves, remove the seeds, put them in a bowl or pan made of stainless steel and cover with sugar. Let the fruit steep for about 12 hours. It is convenient to fill the halves of the plums overnight, but you should definitely cover the dishes so that no foreign matter gets into it.
Put a saucepan or bowl over high heat, bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 5-7 minutes with very frequent stirring. There is no need to add water at the beginning of cooking, since a lot of juice should be released overnight.
The resulting foam must be removed. Pour the jam into sterile jars, close the lids sterilized in boiling water and, after cooling, put it in a cool place for storage.
Plum jam with seeds
To cook aromatic jam from plums, it is not necessary to pull out the seeds. But in this case, you need to take into account several subtleties. To make such a jam, you will need:
- plums - 1.5 kg;
- sugar - 1.5 kg;
- water - 400 ml.
Sort out the plums well. It is better to sort out overripe fruits, as they can be very soft. But too unripe fruits are recommended to be put aside. The jam from them turns out to be insufficiently aromatic and tasty.
Rinse the plums, dry them lightly, and then puncture the bottom of each fruit. You can pierce them with an awl or even a fork. Pour water into a saucepan, add sugar and put the dishes on the fire. Bring the syrup to a boil and only then pour the prepared fruits over it and wait until it cools completely. You cannot put the pan into the refrigerator to speed up the cooling process, as this can spoil the taste of the finished delicacy. Plums should cool naturally.
Boil whole fruits in syrup for 3-5 minutes, then turn off the stove and let the jam cool, and then repeat the cooking followed by cooling 2 times. Arrange the finished jam in sterile jars and close with sterile lids.
To add a spicy note to the workpiece, you can add several clove buds to the syrup. Other spices are also suitable: cardamom, saffron, vanilla, star anise. The set of spices can be determined independently, focusing on your taste preferences. Sweet jam made from whole plums takes on a very unusual taste if you put a cinnamon stick in the syrup.
Plum chocolate jam
To make a jam that tastes like prunes in chocolate, you will need:
- 1 kg of plums;
- 500 g sugar;
- 200 g of cocoa powder.
Rinse the plums, dry, break or cut and remove the seeds. Grind them with a blender until a homogeneous gruel is obtained. You can twist them in a meat grinder.
Pour half the sugar into the resulting mass and put on the stove. Cook the jam for 15 minutes, stirring regularly. Mix the rest of the sugar with cocoa and gradually pour into the plum mass, without stopping to cook it. After 10 minutes, remove the dishes from the stove and pour the aromatic jam with a chocolate flavor into the jars. It is better to store jars in the refrigerator and no longer than 3 months. Over time, the taste of such a piece changes.
Jam from plums
To make plum jam, you need to cook the fruits long enough or add gelatin to the plum mass. To make such a blank, you will need:
- plums - 1.5 kg;
- sugar - 1.5 kg;
- half a lemon;
- gelatin - 15 g.
To make golden jam, you can choose yellow plums, but you can also take the fruits of the usual blue or red color, rinse, dry, divide into halves and remove the seeds, and then carefully remove the skin from each half. This is a very laborious process and for everything to work out, the fruits must be ripe. Grind prepared plums and place in a bowl.
To facilitate the peeling process, you can bake the halves in the oven for about 10 minutes until the fruits soften, and then rub them through a sieve to separate the hard top. Put the gelatin in warm water to swell.
Cover the plum puree with sugar and simmer over low heat for 30 minutes. Rub the lemon on a fine grater very gently to remove the zest, and then squeeze out the juice. Add the juice and zest to the plums, put the swollen gelatin in a bowl or pan, mix everything well and cook for another 10 minutes, then put the jam in sterile jars.
In this recipe, you can use an orange instead of lemon. The delicacy will turn out to be not at all sour and more original. The addition of yellow plums to the usual blue "Hungarian" will have a beneficial effect on the taste of the workpiece.
Plum and pear jam with walnuts
To prepare an original preparation for the winter, you can cook a plum not according to one of the classic recipes, but with the addition of pears and walnuts. The list of ingredients in this case will be extended:
- plum - 1.5 kg;
- ripe pears 500 g;
- sugar - 1 kg;
- a little ginger;
- peeled walnuts - half a glass.
Rinse the plums, sort, remove the seeds and cut each into 4-6 pieces. Peel the ripe pears, remove the inner part with seeds and cut into slices. For this recipe, pears with firm pulp are suitable. Cover the fruits with sugar and put in a cool room for 5 hours, then boil over low heat for 30 minutes.
Grate a small piece of ginger root and put in the jam. Add walnuts. You do not need to grind them. Boil the jam for another 10 minutes, and then lay it out neatly in sterile jars. The nut gives the delicacy a spicy taste and unusual appearance. Pears in this recipe can be replaced with very sweet apples.
Plums in their own juice
If you need to make homemade plums with a minimum amount of sugar, you can preserve the fruits in your own juice. This simple recipe will require:
- plum - 2 kg;
- sugar - 1 kg;
- some water.
Sort the plums, rinse, dry, cut, and carefully remove the seeds. You can cut each half into 2 more pieces. Arrange the halves or quarters of the plums in clean jars, sprinkling each layer with sugar. Plums need to be stacked very tightly, since with further sterilization they will settle and you will have to add additional fruits to the jars. For this reason, it is best to leave some plums and not put them in jars.
Put the jars in a water bath. It is very convenient to use a wide pan for these purposes. Put a towel on the bottom and pour water. Water should cover 2/3 of the container with drains. You can also add a little water to each jar, but this is not necessary. Cover the jars with screw caps. Sterilize the workpiece for 15 minutes, then refill the jars and cook for another 15 minutes, and then screw on the lids. Place the jars on a wooden surface, turning them over with the lids down and wrap them up. You need to turn them over to identify a possible marriage. If the can is not sealed tightly, it will leak. After cooling, remove the workpieces for storage.
Using this recipe, you can also boil plums in your own juice without added sugar. Such a blank is subsequently used for the preparation of various sauces in meat and fish. It can be used to make delicious adjika with garlic and tomato.
