Making Blueberry Jam for Food Day in Canada

According to Anita Stewart, it's Food Day, so I made jam with local organic blueberries. My blueberry jam recipe is still being fine-tuned, but I think this batch has turned out well, so I'll post it here.

Blueberry jam requires pectin for setting. I have nothing against pectin on principle (it's normally made from apples), but I find it has a tendency to impart a slight graininess to the texture. Suggestions welcome.

Follow my raspberry jam recipe to find out about sterilizing jars before mixing up the recipe. For this batch, I used 3 pounds (8 cups) of berries, 4 tbsp of lemon juice, 2 boxes of pectin and 8 cups of sugar.

First, I crushed the berries with a potato masher until they were all really squashed, then added the lemon juice and pectin. It's important to make sure the pectin breaks up and dissolves as much as possible.

I heated the berry mixture to boiling. It already had a glassy, gelatinous look from the pectin before it started to get hot. When it had reached a full rolling boil, I took it off the heat and added the sugar in four parts, stirring well between each addition, and being sure the sugar didn't coat the sides of the pan (or the handle of the spoon.

Next, I returned the pan to the heat and let it come to a full boil, stirring and watching carefully to see it didn't scorch. When I could see that it had set, after 10 to 15 minuutes of boiling, I took it off the heat.

The last stage was filling the jars (the instructions for this and the final processing are also found in my raspberry jam recipe).

In my opinion, whereas the aesthetic pleasure of making jam with raspberries, strawberries or Seville oranges is all about the aromatic quality of the fruit, with blueberries it's more about the dramatic, exciting colours, ranging from deep indigo to vivid red. (Which brings up a side note: watch out, or your fingertips will end up slightly grey!)