Confiture d'abricots

Our jam making experiment continues...

Being penny-wise when it comes to jam-making, Rémi calculated that the cost of making 4 bottles of jam is cheaper than what we paid for 1 bottle.

Making your own jam can be extremely mind blowing. May even be revolting to the health conscious, when right in front of your eyes, you see the jam-maker pouring one whole pack of sugar into the pan, which were to later concentrate into four tiny bottles. So it's more than being penny-wise to spread your jam as thinly as possible.

While Rémi may disagree with me, as he still considers his strawberry jam experiment a success, I firmly believe that his apricot jam was much much better than the strawberry one. In fact, it's as good, or even better than what you can find on supermarket shelves. So if you're going to make jam for the first time, I reckon making apricot jam is a safer guarantee of success, than strawberry. We don't know about other fruits until we try them.

The recipe comes from Rémi's maman.

Apricot Jam (Confiture d'abricots)
Makes approx. four 300ml bottles

1 kg apricots
750g sugar
125ml water

Remove the pits from the apricots. Cut into quarter slices.

Dissolve sugar in water and simmer for 10 minutes over medium heat.

Add the apricot slices and continue to simmer for about 30 minutes or until the syrup has thickened and mixture has set. To check, spoon some jam onto a cold plate, if it moves very little, it is done.

Pour immediately into clean, sterilised bottles. Seal immediately and invert the jar to cool down. Check if seal is airtight by pressing the centre. If it flexes, refrigerate and use like any opened jam you buy.