Apricot Jam

There is a local farm that sells fresh fruits and veggies out of a little shed along the main drag in town.  They just opened for the season a few weeks ago when their cherry and apricot crops were ripe.  Even though they lost a huge percentage of their crops due to the late round of hard frost we had this spring, they still had pretty decent looking produce compared to the local grocery stores.  The cherries were delicious but I only get enough to last me a little while since they tend to go bad pretty quickly.  The apricots have been sweet and juicy from the start.  I have bought a few every week just to have as snacks and I noticed that the numbers have started to dwindle the last couple times I stopped in.  I asked how much longer they expect the crop to be coming in and they told me only a couple more weeks, so this week I bought several pounds of fresh apricots to be made into jam.  Apricot jam has got to be one of my most favorite spreads for pb&j and last year I managed to pull it off the first time I tried making it.  I love the simplicity of the recipe - just fruit, sugar and lemon juice.  It is nice to know what goes into the foods I eat.  The hardest part of the whole process is skinning the apricots.  I tried dunking them in boiling water, but my timing needs more finesse.  Some of the apricots peeled beautifully in one big piece and others were horribly butchered by the time I was done skinning them.  Once they were skinned and pitted I cut them in to good sized chunks and threw them in a big pan with the sugar and lemon juice.

 

I brought it to a boil, stirring the whole while.  This part seemed to take forever, but I have read that making fruit jams without using pectin does take longer, so I wasn't surprised.

 

The mix foamed up quite a bit while it was heating, but it definitely got thicker and thicker while I was stirring.

 

While the jam was cooking I set up the canner and cleaned some jars and lids.  When it was ready I started filling jars with sweet, syrupy apricot jam.  It smelled divine.

 

I set all the jars in the canner when they were full and turned the heat up under the pot to bring it to a boil again.

 

Once the water was boiling again I covered it and started the timer for 20 minutes.  At sea level you only have to let it boil for 10 minutes, but we are at about 6000 feet here so I added an extra 10 minutes just to be safe.  I really don't worry too much about cooking it too long since it doesn't change the finished product.

 

 

Here are the jars in their final stage - cooling.  I usually let them sit overnight before I remove the rings that hold the lids in place.  I got eight half pint jars out of this batch.  If I can buy another few pounds of apricots I may make another batch.  I may just have to wait until the peaches are ready and make peach jam instead.