How To Make Jam | Recipe

How to make jam with Andrew Gravett

Transcript

00:00 Hello my name is Andrew Gravett, I'm the pastry chef at the Langham Hotel

00:03 and we're going to make our apricot and vanilla jam.

00:05 To start off with we've got water and glucose in the pan, we're just going to add some sugar

00:15 and then we're just going to add vanilla pod. We've scraped the seeds out and you tend to find

00:22 anyway that there's more flavour in the pod and this is going to cook, this syrup is going to cook

00:26 to 135 degrees and while that's cooking we're going to prepare the apricots. So the apricots

00:34 we've just halved them and taken the stones out and we're just going to put them through a vegetable

00:39 cutter, a grater on a food processor. If you don't have one of these you can just run them through a

00:44 normal grater on the biggest cutter and the reason why we're going to grate these or cut or slice

00:49 these is that we want them to be small in size so that when we add to the sugar syrup they will

00:54 absorb the sugar very quickly, they release their water quickly and in theory around 5-10 minutes

00:59 the jam should be cooked giving us a jam that's full of flavour. The colour should be vibrant

01:06 orange in this case. So we're going to put these apricots in the food processor with the grater

01:09 cutter to make those fine filaments of apricot.

01:13 [Music]

01:25 So there the apricots are grinded down to the filament and ready to add to the syrup when it's

01:30 got to its 135. So now the syrup has reached 135 degrees we're going to add in the chopped apricots

01:40 just being careful as it might splash a little as we add them. So now what will happen is as it cooks

01:47 the apricots are going to release their water that's going to evaporate. As it's cooking you're

01:52 going to find that there's going to be a scum that will come up on on top of the apricots and this

01:57 we're just going to use a ladle to take this off. We want to cook this as quickly as possible so

02:01 that the heat from the electric stove or from the gas is as full on as possible. The quicker that

02:06 you cook this the fresher flavor the jam should have. So you can see there there's just a foam

02:12 coming on top of the jam we're going to try and remove that without taking too much of the apricots out.

02:17 So now the jam has just reached 105 degrees we're going to add the pectin inside. I'm going to give

02:26 it a quick boil just to finish cooking the pectin off. This is an apple-based pectin just mixed with

02:32 a bit of water and sugar that we've just quickly heated in the microwave. It needs just a little

02:37 boil in the jam and it's ready. And also when it comes to the acid different fruit will need

02:42 different quantities of acid for the pectin to set and in the case of the apricot it's a fruit

02:46 that has a medium amount of its own pectin and it needs a certain amount of acid to set it and

02:51 you'll find that with different fruit you'll have different sets so for different fruits you'll need

02:56 to have different amounts of acid. So there the pectin's cooked I've turned the heat off and I'm

03:00 just going to add the acid to finish it, mix it in and then the jam is ready to put into the jars.

03:05 So now we're going to put the jam into a jar. If you're planning to keep these jams for a long

03:10 time it's important to heat the jar in an oven in a dry oven around 100 degrees just to kill any

03:15 bacteria. Put your jam in the jar as hot as possible so ideally as soon as it's been made

03:20 to go directly in the jar. And here you need to leave about 10% of air in the jar and there's

03:27 your jam ready to serve.