Food for free! Or how we made bramble jelly
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- A kilo of blackberries. Worth all the prickles.
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- Don your Homer apron… woo hoo!
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- Remember, it’s a musliN
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- Rig up a weird straining contraption
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- Boil like your life depended upon it
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- This is why you need a big saucepan
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- Put in pretty jars and add a label
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- Eat with scones and lashings of whipped cream
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- Finally, clear up. Okay, so the wine bottles are mine…
So when me Ma was here, we remarked upon the sheer number of big fat blackberries we saw as we were tootling down the boat road with The Bertster ‘Ooh’, said I, ‘I could make some bramble jelly’.
And so it came to pass that I enlisted a bit of child labour and we set about spending a happy afternoon picking blackberries, getting prickled by thorns and comparing our rapidly blackening fingertips. Every so often, one of us would yell ‘tractor!’ and we’d all have to hurl ourselves into the hedge to avoid being squished. Much fun then ensued as we set to work in the kitchen, #1 looking fetching in the Homer apron (woo hoo!), making a big mess and a very small amount of bramble jelly. You don’t have to ponce about with the muslin if you don’t want to (Hubby popped a curious head around the door to find out why #2 was ferreting in the linen cupboard looking for ‘a Muslim’. Bless.) but I’m not keen on pips. Horses for courses I guess. Here we go, then:
1 kilo blackberries
Juice of 2 lemons
About 1lb sugar
8 fl oz water
So, firstly and most importantly, dollop your berries into the sink and add a good handful of salt and tons of fresh water. All the nasties will die a horrible death and float to the top (one doesn’t want maggot in one’s scone, does one). Rinse them thoroughly in loads of fresh water, then bung them all in a big saucepan (it really bubbles up so leave loads of room) with the lemon juice and water, bring to the boil then simmer for 20 to 30 minutes until the fruit is all mushy.
Let it cool a bit then strain it, either in a fine sieve, making sure you really squish it through with the back of the ladle, or you can do it the labour-intensive way and tie it up in a muslin or one of those jam strainer things, and leave it to drip overnight if you want clear jelly. We got impatient and decided to just squeeze the muslin (although #2 did it a bit hard and it all exploded out of the top) to get out as much as possible. We were left with exactly one pint of juice, which is handy as the jammy scribbles in my old notebook tell me that for each pint of juice you need ½ kg of sugar (by they way, generally with jam you need ½ kg sugar to ½ kg raw fruit).
Add your sugar, then, and bung it back in the saucepan and bring it to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. If you’re a flash monkey like me and have a confectionery thermometer, you need the temperature up to about 220 degrees. Otherwise, just boil it for about five minutes, dollop a teaspoon onto a cold saucer and see if it wrinkles up when you push your finger into it. If not, leave it another couple of minutes and try again.
Give your jars a whizz in the dishwasher, or thoroughly clean them in hot soapy water then pour boiling water over them, inverting them on clean kitchen towel to dry, then pour in your jelly and add a circle of waxed paper and pop on the lid. Go back to the jars every five seconds to wobble them impatiently to see if they really are setting, then store somewhere cool until you bake some fantastic scones to slather it upon. Slurp.
15 Responses to “Food for free! Or how we made bramble jelly”
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also, we are off to Slovakia soon .. they will jave jam’s, pickles, walnut … think I will put on all the weight I’ve lost !!!!
Hey, I’ll see you soon !!, wow, how long has it been ? well over a year now !
I was on a fruitfarm in Blairgowrie on Sunday and I wanted to lug back EVERYTHING to make jam. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring anything like that on the plane, so I just bought a punnet of juicy strawbs and scoffed them on the way to the airport!
Must find local fruitfarms ASAP! (Not sure that picking brambles from next to our local trainstation is such a good idea!)
God, that looks yummy! I absolutely ADORE freshly picked blackberries!
‘Course, I’m horribly allergic, but that’s what antihistamines are for! ;P
Thrifty: Yum indeed – had it on my toast this morning! x
Baino: Wow. I want a flame thrower!!! Yup, I’m a ‘splosh, dollop and lump’ kind of cook. Much more fun that way! x
June: I hear ya. I’m still bleeding in places! x
Moon: Ooh, pickles (drool). Yes we’re all dead excited! But I’ve taken my dress back and haven’t found another one yet (decided it was too summery for an end of September English wedding). Still got a month to shop though, eh? Hope you’ve got your outfit x
Tara: I got it to make fudge originally. Yup, have made toffee and that too – anything sticky and fattening comes very high on our radar!! x
Jen: We used to have a fab pick your own farm near us in the UK. Haven’t seen one here yet though – I remember the technique: one for the punnet, one for me! x
Jen: Are you sure it’s worth the risk? I could stand eagerly by with the epi-pen if you like (heh)
Did you get the invite ok ?..
:O