Hello everyone! I hope that you are having a nice day so far. Today was a very cold day here in Buenos Aires, cloudy, windy, and humid, not very nice weather, but It didn’t matter to me because I was inside almost all day trying to read and to complete some tasks for some project that I am working on.
I love jams, and I always try to keep at least one jar in the fridge for eating at my afternoon breaks with some dessert or toast to accompany my tea. My favorites are the ones made of berries, like blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, I like all of those very much and besides, I think that is another fun way to include fruits in our diet because they are essential.
The only little inconvenience that I find each time I am going to buy a new jam to taste, is that most of them are made with so much sugar, and I am very conscious about the ingestion of sugar, and I try to regulate it and minimize it at the highest amount possible. This represents a challenge when you want to find a good product, because either way it has a lot of sugar, or some of the other “dietetic” jams are made with so many weird ingredients in the tag with names that don’t sound any natural, organic, or healthy.
Is because of this that I want to start making my jams, and today I started with a little bit of Grapes jam, from grapes I already had in my fridge. Grapes are known to contribute to improve our health, because of its high amounts of vitamin c, antioxidants, minerals, natural sugar (energy), and fiber.
These grapes had been in stores for a couple of days, and I wanted to use them before they went too sweet and sour. I’ll tell you next how I made the grapes jam.
I placed the grapes (approximately 500 g of them) with 1 lemon, Liquid stevia sweetener or sugar if you prefer, and agar or cornstarch as I used.
I pushed all the grapes in a pot, with the use of the same instrument I use to make my mashed potatoes. Next, I added the stevia and the juice of a half lemon. I let it rest for approximately one hour.
Then I turned on the stove on medium flame, and when it began to boil, I lowered the flame to a minimum and I stirred like every couple of minutes so the fruit wouldn’t stick to the bottom of the pot and get burned. This step took me around 15 minutes, and then the pulp’s consistency was thicker and stickier to the pan so I decided that it was a good time to add the starch.
Note: most jams are made with the use of agar agar to get the desired consistency out of the pulp of the fruits. However there are alternatives to this ingredient, you can also add cornstarch or any other starch you have already flavorless jello, and others.
I added one teaspoon of cornstarch in approximately 20 ml of water, mixed it well, and then added this to the boiling pulp of the grapes. Without stopping the stirring, I let it boil with the fruit for something like 2-3 minutes so the starch cooks also, and then I turned off the stove to let it rest.
This recipe is healthy, free of preservatives, and made with sweetener so the calories and sugar levels of this are purely from the fruit and are way lower than some of the brands of jams that you can find in the supermarket. You could way that the pulp of the fruit gets cold to eat it, but there are no rules in jam eating and you can eat it on top of things hot, or cold, or as you like it most.
I prepared some infusions and put the warm jam on top of some little toasts I had here, and it was delicious. I encourage you to try and make a jam like this from your favorite fruit and enjoy it for dessert or on tea time.
I thank everyone who may take the time to check on my post, send best wishes, regards, and until next time.
César.