Preserving is often a pastime of later summer, when red fruits have come into season.
However this prettily coloured spring jam recipe makes the most of one of April and May's most excellent ingredients, rhubarb, and adds personality with raspberries. They may not be in season yet but frozen raspberries work beautifully in this spring jam recipe.
Rhubarb and raspberry jam: ingredients
These quantities should fill 11 or 12 190ml jars:
1.5kg trimmed, fresh rhubarb
1.5kg raspberries, defrosted if you have used frozen
1kg granulated sugar
Juice of 2 lemons
Rhubarb and raspberry jam: method
Before you start, put a couple of saucers in the freezer to use when testing the setting point of the jam later.
After washing the rhubarb, cut into small chunks. Add the rhubarb, raspberries and lemon juice to a preserving pan and cook on a medium heat until the fruit is soft but the rhubarb is still intact rather than mushy. This should take about 20-30 minutes, stirring regularly so that the fruit doesn't stick. Remove the pan from the heat and add the sugar, stirring until it is completely dissolved.
Put the pan back on the heat and bring the jam to a rolling boil for 8-12 minutes. At this stage you can test to see if it has reached setting point. Do this by dropping a teaspoon of the jam onto one of your cold saucers. Leave it for a minute and then prod the drop gently with your fingertip - if the jam has formed a skin that wrinkles when you touch it, it is ready. If not, keep boiling for a few more minutes and test another time, then repeat as necessary until the jam reaches setting point.
Remove the pan from the heat and allow to cool a little. Pour into warm, sterilised jars and seal. Once cool, store in the refrigerator. The jam will keep for up to a year unopened but once the seal has been broken, use within three days.
The bright, fresh flavour of this jam is delicious on crumpets, used as a sponge cake filling or on top of porridge.
You can of course make jam with just rhubarb, but this particularly versatile ingredient combines famously well with a number of other ingredients - try making rhubarb and ginger jam, rhubarb and vanilla, rhubarb and strawberry or rhubarb and apple.
