New to making chutney and jelly jams

Wait there will be loads!

Welcome. I only make Dehlias Christmas chutney as am on a permanent diet so no lovely jellies and jams for us although I used to make industrial quantities?

I have become addicted to making Jam and chutney. With jams you can make the varieties you cannot buy in the shops . I do Damson Gooseberry and Rhubarb and ginger.

Well I’ve just made the Christmas chutney, chopping and whizzing and chucking it all in whilst listening to the radio, and chucked in the allspice berries without tying them up in muslin bag.

So we will be having Christmas chutney will little hard bits in it.

Bugger

Anona There is only one way of learning to make jams and chutneys. Give it a try and learn from your mistakes, because, believe me, you will make mistakes. My family still remember my first attempt to make strawberry jam, the result better described as a strawberry thin pouring sauce.

Use a good reliable recipe. Mine come from a book of jam and chutney recipes I bought nearly 50 years ago and I use it for all my basic recipes then over the years I have added extra ones I have picked up or been given.

Currently there are 18lbs of crab apples sitting in a bin outside the kitchen door. These will be cooked in 6lb batches. What I do with the apple juice after boiling and straining will vary. I will take off small quantities to make herb jelly; mint, sage and rosemary, which I use in cooking or as a condiment with roast meat. Most will be reboiled with blackberries and strained again to be turned into bramble jelly. This is popular with family members so I make a lot of it. What is left will be turned into apple jelly.

Since I bought the correct equipment my preserving skills have hugely increased. I have a good stainless steel maslin pan, a decent thermometer, a jam funnel and a good quality jam straining kit with extra muslin bags.
As others have said, you will pick it up as you go along. When I first started making jams, jellies and chutneys it was a huge production, but nowadays I can get a dozen jars filled without breaking a sweat.

I have now learned to preview my message before posting.
I didn't jam the family it was supposed to read "the family liked the jam."

Oh dear. I seem to have lost the original message with the typo

anon

Before my rheumatoid arthritis became really bad, I made every kind of jam imaginable.
I have now invested in a jam maker and it has been a Godsend. I just tip everything in and leave it and it seems to come out perfectly each time. I'm not a great one for following recipes and tend to add my own touches.
There is something satisfying about seeing those jars of jam lined up and as for the smell.......

When I was a child there was a well known jam factory in our town. You could always tell which fruits were in season, by the heavenly smell which pervaded every corner of the town.

Second time lucky!
So far I have made quite a few pots of chilli jam and they have gone down really well with dh.
I pickled some onions and had fun with garlic. It turned a greeny blue colour. Google assured me it will be safe to eat and it is a prized pickle colour in China.
Spurred on I made my Christmas cake yesterday? and today I am trying to make some grape jelly. Thanks all for your patience and help. Will now preview this post.

I've got a recipe for orange pickle which I made once, years ago. It was delicious but very time-consuming.
Otherwise we've made various jams, but never jellies.

I have made chilli apple jelly but no chutney this year as we seem to have jars left from previous years.
I presume it will still be OK with all that sugar and vinegar.

This year I made bramble jelly as we had a glut of blackberries and it is much nice than blackberry jam (unless you like pips).
You will need a muslin cloth which should come with a full preserving kit. I tied it up and hung it from a cupboard door handle as I didn't have the proper contraption for holding a jelly bag.

nicer

You do need to beware of 'low sugar' as sugar is a preservative - the only one in jams and jellies. It also makes a big difference to texture.
My own take is that home-made jams are so nice that you don't need much, so I make to traditional recipes, and find a small amount is plenty.
I also stir blackberry and apple jam into porridge instead of sugar. I come from a country area and my grandmother said that sugar was very expensive, so they saved up, in order to use it for jams and jellies, especially blackberry and crab apple. It wasn't used in tea (they used honey). But a family would get through a pot a day on porridge for breakfast and bread at teatime.

Jelly making starts tomorrow. There are 18lbs of crab apples waiting in a container (and the not very large tree is so covered with apples that you can hardly see where I picked them).

12lbs will be used to make bramble jelly. I have a long queue of eager 'customers' waiting for me to make it and receive several jars, then there are Christmas gifts.

The rest will be flavoured with herbs. Rosemary, sage or mint to make nice tracklements to be served with meat, or stirred into stews.

M0nica please could you give me some guidelines for the quantity of herbs you add. Sounds really yummy. I would love to try making some for Christmas.