I can’t believe we’re already halfway through the Cook It! 2012 challenge! We’ve made and shared so many awesome staples and recipes so far: pasta, bread, butter, cheese, lactofermented veg (pickles) and now jam.
Well, in my case, marmalade.
According to the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving, a marmalade is nothing more than a jam or jelly with fruit peel suspended in it.
I’d call that jam with zing!
I’m not new to making jams and jellies, so this challenge didn’t fill me with any real trepidation. But I did want to do something a little bit different. However, I picked a time when the only fresh fruit to be had was strawberries.
(Believe me, I’m not complaining. Who the heck would complain about fresh strawberries?)
But everyone does strawberry jam and that wouldn’t be very Challenge-ish, now would it?
Hence the strawberry-lemon marmalade.
In this post, I’m not going to tell you how to can. There are way too many other resources out there that can do a better job than I, so you won’t be reading here about how to prepare your jars or lids or anything like that. But I will advise you, if you’ve never canned before, be sure to read Caroline’s tips about trusted resources (e.g., my recipe came from the Ball Blue Book, rather than some random Google search), added pectin vs. natural (I added pectin), ratios, etc.
Canning isn’t hard but there are food safety issues to consider. Hey, you don’t want to be known forever as the one who poisoned Aunt Betty with your hip food blogging project.
So here’s what I did, with pictures…
Please continue to Next Page (>) for the full list of ingredients and complete cooking instructions.