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blackberries

Sun 15-Aug-10
8:34 am

mandy475

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Hi im new to all this jam making, last week we picked blackberries and got home and froze them straight away, ive taken them out for defrosting and there is alot of juice, i wanted to wash them to make sure there are no maggots but it will wash all the juice away. What should i do because i dont want maggot jam? thankyou

Sun 15-Aug-10
8:41 am

mandy475

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mandy475 said:

Hi im new to all this jam making, last week we picked blackberries and got home and froze them straight away, ive taken them out for defrosting and there is alot of juice, i wanted to wash them to make sure there are no maggots but it will wash all the juice away. What should i do because i dont want maggot jam? thankyou

hi again, do i have to use pectin? i am using preserving sugar and lemon juice aswell?

Sun 15-Aug-10
12:35 pm

Rae Mond

Waalre, NL

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Hi Mandy!

I don't know what to tell you about the frozen maggot issue. You could strain the juice to get out any wee beasties floating in it, then wash the berries. I must confess that I'm not overly finnicky about washing the fruit before starting to make jam.

What recipe are you using? the blackberry and apple one on here is brilliant and calls for straining the fruit through a sieve after boiling it, which would take out any lingering beastie bits. I've not had any problems with bits sneaking through.

And I've never bothered adding pectin, or even using preserving sugar rather than normal sugar, it's always worked fine for me.

Hope it works out for you!

Intolerance will not be tolerated.

Sun 15-Aug-10
3:43 pm

Danny

Scarborough, England

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Hi from me too, Mandy.

Rae is spot on regarding not requiring pectin and just using ordinary sugar for blackberry jam. We do not like preserving sugar, to be honest, because we think the flavour is better with ordinary.

Regarding washing and "foreign bodies" you really have to pick over the fruit before freezing. We don't was blackberries either.

I think strain and reserve the juice. Pick through the mushy blackberries as best you can. Then pop them back in the juice, close your eyes, and away you go!

Good luck

Never knowingly underfed

Sun 15-Aug-10
3:47 pm

Toffeeapple

North Bucks

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wave Hello and welcome Mandy!

I'll try that again!

Sun 15-Aug-10
6:26 pm

Shereen

Near Belfast, Northen Ireland

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Hi Mandy and welcome to the Forum.

When I pick blackberries (in the next week or two since Norn Iron is a bit behind the mainland) I leave them in a shallow bowl for a while to give the grubs time to show themselves. I then pick off as much as I can, seperating the whole firm berries from the squashed ones. The firm berries get a light rinse and are left to dry on kitchen roll, the rest are used as they are.

Sun 15-Aug-10
6:54 pm

shelley

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I agree; the firm berries are washed lightly and the rest picked through. You dont need pectin as the recipe on the site adds apple, which is full of the stuff. Have fun; I made 26 jars of the stuff yesterday!

Sun 15-Aug-10
10:05 pm

danast

Argyll, Scotland

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wave Hi Mandy and welcome. Like Shereen we in Scotland are later with our brambles ( as we call them. ) I actually found one ripe one today, but I didn't bother making jam with it!!! big_laugh

Old teachers never die, they just lose their class

Mon 16-Aug-10
7:24 pm

shelley

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danast said:

Hi Mandy and welcome. Like Shereen we in Scotland are later with our brambles ( as we call them. ) I actually found one ripe one today, but I didn't bother making jam with it!!!

LOL big_laugh

Thu 26-Aug-10
2:28 pm

Sarah-J

North Yorkshire

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Great comments, I have some blackberries and am thinking of using them for jam. Unfortunatley I didn't look down the topic list to see this topic was already being dicussed and created a new one. Sorry for that embarassed

You make it sound quite easy so I'm going to give it a try runaway

Thu 26-Aug-10
4:27 pm

Toffeeapple

North Bucks

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No problem in creating a new thread Sarah. big_hug

I'll try that again!

Fri 27-Aug-10
9:29 am

KateUK

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If you make jelly rather than jam you will strain all the maggots away with the pips-the maggots have only been eating blackberry so they are made from blackberry is what my great Grandma always used to say as she tipped the berries into the pan without washing them first!

Kateuk makes things at http://www.etsy.com/shop/finkstuff and sometimes she does this too http://www54paintings.blogspot.com/ and also this http://finkstuff.weebly.com/

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