Sunday, May 9, 2010

Canning sunshine - mango jam!

More mangoes! This week's attempt is mango jam. I've never actually tasted mango jam before, but the concept appealed to me so I decided to give it a try. I used Amendt's Blue Ribbon Preserves for the recipe.

I'm starting to discover that mango canning recipes use a lot fewer mangoes than I thought they would. Today's jam recipe called for 4 1/2 cups of chopped mango -- which worked out to seven mangoes. Which means I'm sitting on 28 more trying to figure out what to do!

The second discovery is that jam requires a LOT of sugar -- in this case 7 cups! When I put the mango and sugar together in a pot, I thought there was no way there would be enough liquid in the mango to dissolve the sugar. How wrong I was. And what an incredibly bright mix!

Preparation was pretty much a snap: macerate the mango in sugar for a few hours, then cook it down, add pectin, and can. The vibrant colour was a bit more subdued after cooking, but after emerging from the water bath it still looked gorgeous.

YIELD VERDICT: WIN!
CANNING VERDICT: WIN!
BROKEN GLASS: NONE!

All in all, a great canning!



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