Lots of apricots for delicious jam: how to cook it quickly and easily without gelatin and agar

We bought a dacha with an apricot orchard. Half the trees were cut down, but the most delicious apricots were left. But this quantity is too much for our family - we collect 5 buckets from one tree, but we have 7 of them! The volumes are large, there is no time to bother with complex recipes. I seal the compotes and make quick apricot jam. The former owners of the dacha shared the recipe. I really liked it. The jam is thick, just like in the store. You can easily spread it on bread. And most importantly, you don’t need to stand at the stove for hours.

How to quickly make apricot jam?

According to the technology, the jam is brewed in several stages, with the obligatory decanting of the juice and careful boiling of the berry puree. On a production scale, vacuum devices and other special equipment are used for this. It is difficult to repeat the entire process at home. Therefore, many are content with grinding apricots into puree, adding sugar and bringing to a boil several times. It turns out to be jam. It's too runny for me.

To make real apricot jam at home - thick and dense, there are several tricks:

• Add gelatin to the jam to thicken.
• Add agar agar for the same purpose.
• Use pectin.
• Prepare jam according to a special recipe.

To be honest, I have never tried making jam with gelatin or agar-agar. It seems to me that they have their own characteristic taste. I'm afraid of spoiling the food.And the fuss with breeding, the time for swelling is too difficult for me. I would try pectin, but I couldn’t find it in a small store, and I forget to look in large supermarkets. They say that it does not give any aftertaste, and jams with it turn out just right.

I make apricot jam according to a recipe where you don’t need to add anything extra. Only apricots, sugar, water and citric acid. The trick to boiling jam quickly is the correct sequence of steps.

Quick jam - step by step recipe

In summer, the entire dacha is strewn with apricots. There really are a lot of them. We eat to our heart's content and treat our relatives and neighbors. I cover the thickest ones with compotes, and the softer ones, cracked when falling from a tree, are good for jam. They are very sweet. Almost no sugar can be added.

A bucket is approximately 7 kg of apricots. When you peel the seeds, even less remains - 5 kg of fruit. For this amount I take 3 kg of sugar and 2 glasses of water. I cook jam in two 5-liter pans. At the end I get 10 half liter jars. The whole process from peeling apricots to seaming takes me 50-60 minutes.

Step by step recipe:

1. Wash and peel the apricots from pits. For one 5 liter pan I take 2.5 kg of peeled fruits.
2. Place the peeled apricots into a saucepan and puree with an immersion blender.
3. Dissolve 100 g of sugar in a glass of warm water and pour into a saucepan.
4. Cook the puree over low heat for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. The moisture should evaporate from it.
5. Pour the remaining sugar (1.4 kg) into the pan, add 1.25 teaspoons of citric acid.
6. Bring to a boil and turn off immediately.
7. Collect all foam. Don't be alarmed that the jam is runny. It will set when it cools and sit for a while (about a day).
8. Pour hot jam into sterilized jars and roll up.
9. Place the jars with their lids down on a large terry towel and wrap them up.

If you add sugar at the end, rather than at the beginning, the moisture evaporates from the jam better and faster. It does not darken and remains a beautiful amber color. The sugar just dissolves and the apricot puree gels well.

Proportions for 1 kg of apricots:

• 0.5-1 kg of sugar;
• 100 ml water;
• 0.5 teaspoons of citric acid.

5 useful tips

You can make more jam or less, the essence does not change. The only thing I would recommend is:

1. Peel the apricots from pits with a pencil. This significantly speeds up the process, especially if the fruits are soft and the stone is difficult to separate. Press the blunt side against the sharp “nose”. The seed will pop out where the stalk is.
2. Use a saucepan with a thick bottom and walls. It is very important! It heats more evenly, the jam does not burn and it turns out delicious.
3. Do not replace sugar with granulated sugar. Fine granulated sugar dissolves too quickly.
4. Fill the jars almost to the top with jam. This guarantees long-term storage of the preserves.
5. Cook with love and only in a good mood. If you do conservation while angry or tired, you will definitely get burned or something will break. Tested by experience more than once!

This apricot jam recipe has saved me two years in a row. There are a lot of soft apricots. Every day we collect under the tree. You can’t put these in compote. And just right for jam or preserves. I also seal the jam, but not in such volumes. Eating poorly. But the jam is so tasty that we start eating it in the summer. Like apricot honey. With pancakes, pancakes, and just on bread - delicious!