Mango Jam

Necessity is the mother of invention they say. Right from time humans had to find ways to save their fragile and abundant food items from spoiling and going to waste right before their eyes. In comes several preservation methods. I'm using one of the numerous ways to preserve fruit in this blog post. Jamming. Preserving mangoes using sugar.

Tadaa ✨

I have plenty mangoes and they are ripening faster than we can eat them. They are also really fragrant and very very sweet! I hate to see them go to waste so of course I think of makimg jam. 

To make jam what you need is fruit of choice and sugar.

 Fruits naturally high in pectin {the chemical that gelatinizes jam after cooking and cooling} do not need any pectin added, sugar and said fruit is all that's needed, then heat to cook the jam. There are some fruits that don't have adequate amounts of pectin in their natural makeup, so we do need to add pectin (store bought) or use juice or pulp of some high-in-pectin fruit to help "set" {read gelatinize} the finished product. Mangoes happen to fall into the latter category. 

 Now that we've got that out of the way let's get into the recipe 👍

INGREDIENTS:

2kg Mango pulp

700g Granulated white sugar

3 tablespoons lime/lemon juice

PROCEDURE:

1) Pour all the sugar and all of the mango pulp into a 4 litre heavy bottomed pot. Stir until all the sugar is moistened with the mango juices. 

2) Put your pot with the mango and sugar mixture on fire, medium heat. Cook the mixture stirring occasionally so the bottom does not scorch and burn. After 10 minutes your mixture should be hot enough to start bubbling. Keep stirring and keep an eye on it because it might foam up if there's plenty liquid in the pot. You cook the mixture for 20 more minutes. The volume must have reduced after 20minutes and become thicker, the sugar fully dissolved and the color of the mix darkened. 

3) Take the pot off the heat and let it sit while stirring for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes pour in your lime juice and mix it well into the hot jam. Cover and let it sit to cool down for about 20 minutes {this lowers the temperature enough to handle safely and still be of pourable concistency when ready to pour into your prepared jars}.

4) Pour your jam into your sterilized glass jars to the top leaving just 2cm headspace from the rim. Set the jars uncovered in a clean place to cool completely before putting on the lids and refrigerating. 

 *If you want your jam to be shelf stable for longer than a few weeks in the fridge you'll have to take it one step further. You should pour the warm jam into your jars and put the lids on them immediately and cook the bottles in a pot of boiling water for about an hour. This will help seal the lids and kill any harmful bacteria in the jam that will make it spoil. After boiling take out the jars and keep them in a safe place to cool completely undisturbed for 24hours. These will last years in your pantry/store if unopened. 

The universal fruit to sugar ratio in jam making is 2:1 but I reduced the amount of sugar in the recipe because my mangoes are really sweet and very ripe so I felt the jam didn't need that much sugar. 

 Citrus are naturally really high in pectin, reason why I used lime juice in the recipe. It's for the pectin. 

I added the lime juice {pectin} at the end because I did not want to cook it too much and risk killing the pectin thereby having a runny end product. 

 I don't use any special equipment like thermometers because I believe jam making for home use isn't that serious and just looking at the mixture one can tell when it's ready or done. 

If you have any questions please leave them in the comment section and I'll be sure to answer them. 

Enjoy 💕