Category: Food

In the Seattle area, invasive Himalayan blackberry vines abound with thorny branches and complex root systems. From my experience, these are the #1 most difficult weed to remove because the thorny branches always leave bloody battle scars, grow extremely fast, and it’s never clear how extensively the root system goes. Even their serrated leaves have thorny center veins!

But there is one silver lining! Once a year, at the peak of summer (usually late August), they yield a bounty of edible fruit with rich flavor and big seeds.

Walking back from the library, I scouted a blackberry patch on an abandoned lot. These berries grew with less exposure to car traffic and pollution being on a quiet residential street. I later set out with the hubby and big bowls to harvest as much as we could until we couldn’t tolerate the thorny pricks, stings and sticky berry juice stains any more. I blended the berries, strained out the big seeds through a sieve, and set out to make blackberry kombucha and enough preserves for the year. These can be enjoyed with plain greek yogurt or in baking.

For the first time, I got fruit jam to set! 2 full days after preparing the blackberry jam and putting some jars in the fridge, I tilted them and noticed they were no longer watery. Yes!

Here is the actual recipe I used, which is based on the tested Ball recipe from my pectin jar label. This was my first serious attempt at making jam and the result is good, but I don’t feel it’s good enough to share as a gift to neighbors or friends. I include notes for future recipe improvements.

Improvements for Next Time:

• Use less water: There is a half inch of excess water above the set jam in most jars.
• Use slightly less pectin: The jam is a little thick like jelly, whereas I’d prefer a spread.
• Keep more seeds: I like a little more visible seeds
• Try sugar instead of honey: There is a distinct honey taste. I don’t mind, but sugar is more neutral.
• Add lemon or lime juice to add slightly more tartness

Ingredients

• Yield: 12 half pint jars + a quarter pint
• Total process time: 2 hours. Start a few hours before dinnertime!
• About 2kg or 4.2lbs freshly picked blackberries, washed and rinsed
• 14 tablespoons of low/no-sugar pectin (next time: try 12 tablespoons).
• 2 cups or 500mL of water (next time: 1.25 – 1.5 cups)
• 510g (about 3/4 of a bear bottle) of Organic Raw Honey
• Next time: Juice of 1 or 2 fresh squeezed lemons

Tools

• Pressure Canner (Presto Model 0178)
• 12 quart stock pot
• 12 Half-pint mason jars, canning lids and rings, sterilized in boiling water
• Wide mouth funnel, canning tongs, hot jar wrench
• Blender
• Strainer
• Boiling tap water to submerge jars in the canner
• Timer

Steps

1. Blend blackberries and strain out the seeds in batches. Pour fruit juice/non-seed pulp into stock pot.
   Note: The seeds comprised about 1/4 of my blackberry weight.
2. Add some seed pulp back to stock pot, to taste or visual preference. I used 70g of seeds, next time try 150g of seeds.
3. Heat berries. Bring berry stock pot slowly up to a boil, gradually stirring in pectin. Break pectin clumps and stir continuously. Bring to a full roiling boil that cannot be stirred down.
4. Add sweetener and boil 1 minute. Sugar or honey. The blackberries are not sweet enough for my taste to make a true no sugar jam. Some day you’ll be hardcore. Add lemon juice here and taste test. Return to a full rolling boil for one minute (set timer).
5. Remove from heat. No need to skim foam per Ball, it will go away!
6. Follow canning directions to water bath 12 jars’ worth of delicious preserved blackberry jam, with a little extra (quarter pint) to enjoy without canning.
7. Chicken snack. Feed excess blackberry seed pulp to chickens! They will love it, and you will love not having anything to throw away!