Hey everyone, it’s Jim, welcome to our recipe page. Today, I will show you a way to prepare a special dish, hedgerow jam. It is one of my favorites. This time, I’m gonna make it a bit unique. This will be really delicious.
A family favourite that uses autumn fruits from the hedgerow and garden. "Hedgerow jam" is really a catch-all name for any jam you make using the fruits of your foraging labours - blackberries, elderberries, crabapples, rosehips, sloe, hawthorn, damsons and so on. This autumn jam is a great preserve to make for foragers or anyone with a bountiful supply of autumn fruit, especially if you have a little of everything and want to mix any hedgerow fruit such as sloes, elderberries, blackberries and bilberries. Hedgerow Jam The tart-sweet nature of blueberries makes them the perfect compliment to gooseberries - currants deepen the flavor and add a richness that makes this a truly winning combination. Gooseberries are naturally high in pectin so you don't have to add a thickening agent to this mix.
Hedgerow jam is one of the most popular of recent trending foods in the world. It is appreciated by millions every day. It is simple, it is fast, it tastes delicious. Hedgerow jam is something that I’ve loved my entire life. They’re fine and they look wonderful.
To begin with this recipe, we must first prepare a few components. You can cook hedgerow jam using 4 ingredients and 10 steps. Here is how you can achieve it.
The ingredients needed to make Hedgerow jam:
- Make ready 1 kg apples - I'm lucky enough to have several trees growing along the field where i pick my other fruits and i use the eating apples in the jam and cooking apples for pies and crumbles
- Prepare 500 grams mixed fruit/berries (blackberries, elderberries, damson and wild plums in mine but you can also do sloes and rosehips or any Hedgerow fruit that grows locally to you or you could buy at your greengrocer if you can't get anywhere to pick your own)
- Get 1 kg sugar - you can use jam sugar but with this quantity of apples there should be enough pectin for setting
- Get 100 ml water
Anna Canning is a qualified medical herbalist and expert forager. We recently spoke with Anna for our September issue, discussing her participation in this year's virtual Foraging Fortnight Festival. Description - Containing a delicious mix of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries, our hedgerow jam is the perfect accompaniment for a delicious breakfast or afternoon tea. Size & Fit + Material & Care + A hedgerow jam recipe is generally a combination of seasonal wild fruits, which can include apples, crab apples, haw berries, elderberries, wild blackberry, sloes, damsons and more.
Steps to make Hedgerow jam:
- Place a saucer in the freezer
- Chop up apples and place in a large saucepan or preserving pan- for true Hedgerow jam remove stalks but nothing else all the goodness is in the peel and core - I chop mine into 8 chunky pieces (I also freeze all of my fruit on the day it's picked ready for jam making another day)
- Add all of the other fruit and the water
- Bring up to the boil, then turn down the heat to a gentle simmer and leave for around 30 minutes until most of the fruit has pulped
- Use a hand blender to pulp the jam further and to ensure Apple skins are well incorporated - if you don't have a hand blender you could use your food processor or a potato masher/ricer, but make sure you let it cool first
- Now add the sugar and stir until it has all dissolved. Bring up to a rolling boil. Do not have heat any higher than it has to go. Once it comes to the boil start lowering the heat until it just maintains a boil. If you try to boil it too fast it will burn to the bottom of saucepan and the burnt sugar taste will go right through the whole batch :(
- How long do you boil it for? Every batch can be different so anywhere between 8 and 28 minutes and all times outside those parameters! It will be dependent upon what heat source you use, how big is the saucepan and what is it made of, what fruits did you use in what ratio. Also, how many times you stirred to stop it sticking, what brand of sugar you use, and is your water soft or hard!
- This is where the saucer comes in. After 8-10 minutes remove your saucer from the freezer and drop a teaspoon of jam on it. Pop it back in the freezer for 1 minute. When you take it back out use your little finger and very gently using the lightest touch, drag your finger along the top of the jam. If it wrinkles up it has reached setting point if it doesn't continue for another 5 minutes and repeat the procedure. My mix took 21 minutes to reach setting point.
- Turn off the heat but give it a good stir as the heat keeps it bubbling for a while and it can still burn
- Ladle into your jars, but be careful as the jam is so hot it WILL remove skin. This quantity should make 5-6 lb jars. I put a circle of parchment into the top of each jar and smooth down to remove air bubbles. Don't put lids on until it is cold. Fancy labels and a square of festive cloth makes a cheap and cheerful gift for a friend :)
Description - Containing a delicious mix of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries, our hedgerow jam is the perfect accompaniment for a delicious breakfast or afternoon tea. Size & Fit + Material & Care + A hedgerow jam recipe is generally a combination of seasonal wild fruits, which can include apples, crab apples, haw berries, elderberries, wild blackberry, sloes, damsons and more. This wonderful wild blackberry and sloe jam combination is one which I have been really wanting to share with you. My Mom would cook the berries into a delicious jam that could sparkle just as red as the raspberries beckoning between the green leaves, or be dark and jewel toned when there were more blackberries in the mix. Place everything into a heavy bottomed saucepan and bring to a simmer.
So that’s going to wrap it up with this exceptional food hedgerow jam recipe. Thank you very much for reading. I’m sure you can make this at home. There’s gonna be more interesting food at home recipes coming up. Don’t forget to bookmark this page in your browser, and share it to your loved ones, friends and colleague. Thank you for reading. Go on get cooking!
