Blueberry Jam

Friday I made blueberry jam. Which is not all that hard.

First, you wash the blueberries:


Then you kind of run your fingers through them to find and remove all the mushy ones, all the stems, all the whatnot. Your fingers will be surprisingly adept at doing this. Trust them.

Then, you measure 10 cups of blueberries and you place them in a bowl. Are you excited yet?


You should be excited, because this is the fun part. You now get to mash the shit out of those blueberries!


You can use a food processor, but what's the fun in that? Getting in there with your hands is much more satisfying. And needs less clean-up.

Then throw some pectin, lemon juice, and water in a huge pot on the stove with the 10 cups (now reduced down to about 6 cups) of macerated blueberries.


Soon, they will start to bubble.


You don't have to do anything at this point. Not even stir. Maybe, if you're OCD like me, you take some pictures.

After about 10 minutes, the berries will reach a rolling boil:


And, you can see, they've about tripled in volume. When I said a big pot, I meant a damn big pot.

At this point, I added a shit-ton of sugar. No, really. 7 cups.

Then, blah blah blah, bring it back to a boil, for a few minutes, and then ladle the steaming hot jam into waiting hot jars (hot jam + cold jars = broken jars), and then screw on the lids/seals, and process the jars in a boiling water bath for 5 minutes.


Yeah, this part is really boring, but I thought the picture was cool. So I'm posting it.

Then, wait for the jars to cool, wash off all the sticky blueberry jam residue from the outsides (surprisingly, 5 minutes in boiling water does not clean the jars), and add pretty ribbons.


Et Voila! 5.5 pints of pretty blueberry jam, ready to give to your friends.

(Because there's no way in hell I'm eating that much jam in the next month and a half, and um, I'm not moving JAM halfway across the country. I just like making things, and I was bored, so my friends better like that damn blueberry jam!)