Red currant and Vanilla jam

Have you ever tried to make your very own jam? No? Then it’s definitely time to do so!
Don’t you enjoy all the fresh fruits and beautiful berries at the farmer’s market, ripe and full of flavour? Cooking them into jam is a good method to preserve some of their fruity sweetness for the cold winter months, when the choice of seasonal fruits is not as huge as it is right now.

And making jam is not as time-consuming as it might seem sometimes. Of course, it depends on the kind of fruits you choose, but basically it’s just cleaning and cutting the fruits, adding sugar and letting the whole thing boil for a few minutes. I chose red currant and decided to strain half of the fruits because those little berries hold a lot of seeds, so it took me some time to prepare all the ingredients. But it was definitely worth all the work, and if you want to give it a try, you’ll find the recipe for my Red currant and Vanilla jam below

Red currant and Vanilla jam makes about 5-6 jars

Ingredients: 2kg fresh and ripe red currants 1kg gelling sugar (2:1) 1 vanilla bean (preferably bourbon vanilla!)You also need: about 6 large or 8 small jam jars

First, prepare your jam jars by washing them very carefully with hot water and then letting them rest upside down on a clean towel until needed. Remove all the berries from the stems and carefully wash them with cold water. Put half of the currants into a pot and add just enough water so that the berries are barely covered. On low heat, bring them to a simmer and let boil carefully for about 1 minute. Transfer the berries into a sieve and strain them into a clean bowl until you’ve got a nice and seed-free purree. Cut the vanilla bean in half (lengthwise!) and scrape out the seeds. Put the purree, the remaining currants, gelling sugar, vanilla seeds and vanilla bean halves into a pot and carefully bring to a boil while stirring continuously. Let boil for at least 3 minutes or as long as the instruction on the sugar package says. When the jam has jelled, remove the vanilla bean halves. Carefully fill the jam into the prepaired jars, close the jars immediately and let them rest upside down for at least 5 minutes. (By doing this, you vacuum seal the jars so that the jam won’t go off so soon.)

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