Spiced Plum Jam Recipe - Sweet and So Delicious! - Oh So Savvy Mom (2024)

FAQs

How do you reduce tartness in plum jam? ›

Continue stirring the plums and sugar until the fruit starts to turn translucent. At this time, taste for sweetness. Take a small amount of the (still liquid) jam in a teaspoon, cool and taste it. If it tastes too sour for your liking, add a teaspoon or two more of sugar and continue cooking.

European plums, aka prune plums, are mainly grown to be turned into dried plums. Their thick skins, high sugar content, and dense flesh make them ideal for drying, and best for baking and jam-making.

To make jam, choose plums that have a rich, deep color and skin that is firm but not taut. Just ripe plums are best for jam making—the peel will come off easily; overripe plums will be sticky and will easily split and may not make as tasty jam.

What's the difference between plum butter and plum jam, you might be wondering? While jam is typically made of cooked fruit with the addition of pectin to make it somewhat gelatinous, fruit butter is basically a reduced fruit puree. Fruit butters are usually silkier, more spreadable, and use waaaay less sugar.

If your dish tastes too sour try to add sweetness—think sugar, honey (it's healthy!), cream or even caramelized onions. You can also dilute the dish (same as you would with a dish with too much salt). As a last resort, add a pinch of baking soda to make the dish more alkaline.

How Do You Neutralize Sour Taste in Food? If a dish is too sour, add a little bit of sugar! Sweetness balances out sour flavors, so if something makes your mouth pucker, a dash of sugar may help soften the blow of the sour food.

Plum Jam – Smoked Gouda, Goat, or Cream. Apricot Jam - Grana Padano, Gran Queso, or Parmigiano Reggiano. Blueberry Jam – Stilton, Manchego, or Goat. Chipotle Jelly – Spicy Blue Cheese, Sharp Cheddar, Aged Parmesan, or Feta.

The skins completely broke down during the cooking process into a deliciously sweet jam. The skins also contain a lot of pectin, which helps the jam gel. So here's my advice: leave the skin on the plums. Even if you don't like plum skin, you won't be able to tell!

If, on the other hand, the jam is rock solid, that means you've gone too far and cooked it too long. You can try adding a little water to thin it out, but bear in mind that after overcooking a jam, you can't really get those fresh fruit flavors back.

Can I freeze plums to make jam later? ›

Freezing plums is as easy as can be, and the fruit wedges will last up to six months in your freezer. Use your frozen plums to make jam or preserves, add them into smoothies, or eat the wedges straight out of the freezer for a cool treat.

Homemade fruit preserves can last for up to year or even longer if it is unopened and stored in a cool, dry place, such as a pantry or kitchen cupboard. However the flavour and texture of your jam will start to deteriorate after around 6 months, even if you keep them tightly sealed.

Greengage plums are some of the sweetest plums available and are one of the only varieties that have green skin at the point of ripening. Mirabelle – Mirabelle plums are native to France. Also known as cherry plums, these yellow plums are sweet and often turned into jams and jellies.

So if you use pieces of fruit or whole berries, you are actually using less fruit than if it were mashed, or cooked to a mash and then measured, and you will get a firmer jell. Or you may have used more pectin than the recipe called for. For example, if you used Tablespoons of pectin rather than teaspoons.

Colleen suspects it's to do with the breakdown of sugars that give that bitter taste. When you're cooking the sugars at high heat you get non-enzymatic browning, which occurs either through caramelisation or something called the Maillard reaction. That is an interaction of proteins and sugars.

If it's too tart, add more sugar (or honey, or maple syrup). You can add flavorings (spices, vanilla bean, booze, tea, herbs) if you want to zip things up. Or leave it plain, though I often add a pinch of salt to bring out the flavors.

Sweetness: From sugar, honey, fruits or otherwise, sweetness will counteract bitter and sour flavours. It can also be used to cut down the heat of a particularly spicy meal.

How to Make Food Less Acidic. Add a fat such as butter, heavy cream, sour cream, cheese, or olive oil to coat the tongue and physically block some of the acidity from your taste buds. You might also try adding a sweetener such as sugar, honey, or maple syrup.