Plum jam is one of the most popular types of jam. If your grandparents had an orchard, this jam is guaranteed to remind you of childhood, when traditional plum jam was still cooked in cauldrons over an open fire, without sugar, for hours until a thick, almost coal-black mass was formed.
This method requires a lot of patience and work, but if you adapt it to the rhythm of today’s modern life, you can make delicious plum jam a little easier and faster.
One of the most important spices in plum jam is cinnamon, but if you feel more adventurous, you can also try rum and vanilla essence to flavor it. There are several ways to prepare plum jam – you can cook it with sugar added at the beginning, cook it in the oven, or combine the two methods.
Make sure that the plums used are ripe and healthy, so that the jam is as tasty as possible. It is also important that the jam is made from sweet, not too hard plums, and that the skin of the fruit is not too thick.
It is probably easiest to make plum jam in the oven, as this way the oven does most of the work for you, and you don’t have to constantly stir the jam. 5 kg of plums will make about 3 kg of jam, but the final amount also depends on how thick you cook the jam.
First, wash and pit the plums and cut out the bad parts. Place the chopped fruit in a deep, enameled pan and start cooking in the oven preheated to 180 degrees Celsius, stirring every half hour. Cook until the jam turns thick. (Plums can be baked whole if you don’t want to waste time chopping them.)
Sugar and spices, such as cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, can be added to the jam towards the end of cooking. Mix the jam thoroughly with the spices, then put the pan back in the oven for at least another half hour.
Pour the finished jam into hot sterilized jars, then screw on the caps and turn the jars upside down for about 10 minutes. Then wrap them in blankets and let them cool gradually.