Making Apricot Jam
Ingredients:
- Four and eight tenths of a kg of Apricots
- Four kg of sugar
- two hours of time on the fire
- Cut each apricot in two removing the stones.
- Put them all together in one container if possible to mix with the sugar. This saves you time and math figuring out how much sugar goes in one container or another and then stirring various containers individually. Who needs that when you have a big container. Note: The stones weigh about 360 g. So it leaves with only 4½ kg of apricots to cook.
- Put all the pots on the fire. Thick metal pots radiate the heat more evenly. By choosing thick pots like these from Essen, you prevent the slurry from burning. Now if you have a pot that can hold 9 kg of apricots and sugar then you should use that. If not, you'll have to put the slurry in individual pots.
- Cook them for two hours. Stir them occasionally and regulate heat so they don't boil over --- too often. It happens. They should boil deep orange rather than whiteish yellow foam. When you see yellow foam, you need to stir. If the slurry gets too high in the pots, you need to lower the heat.
- Allow to cool for twenty minutes.
I expected to get 8 kg of product from this but instead I got 5.8 kg. So 8.8 kg goes in and 5.8 kg comes out of the process. The 3 kg goes away and gets lost as steam. Who wants Steem anyway? Water had to be added because the jam was becoming too thick to spread. The only sweetener is sugar which also preserves the jam.