Laura D Durham

Pluot Jam… I hope.

Well, there it is. My very first attempt at canning. It is a very stressful process, but I think that’ll lessen as I get more experience. And I am definitely gaining experience.

What I Learned During My First Time Canning:

1. When planning to can for the first time, do not buy 15 pounds of “stone fruit” and wait until it arrives before knowing what fruit it actually is. As good as Pluots are, there are not a hell of a lot of canning recipes for them. And a first-timer really shouldn’t be winging it.
2. Make sure you have all your equipment ready. Seriously, all of it. Take time to actually dry-run through the process to make sure you’re not searching all over for that one thing you need right now.
3. Make sure to have all your ingredients ready. Finding out that you don’t actually have any lemon juice to add to the pot of cut fruit and sugar is incredibly stressful. Having to resort to lime juice adds to the stress.
4. Cut your fruit prior to having all your pots boiling. It takes much longer than you think it will.
5. Make sure you know what jar sizes you have. Again, winging it isn’t really smart on your first time out. The sizes of these bad boys are kind of important to the processing times.

After all that, though, I at least know better how the process proceeds. Next time I’ll cut my fruit a bit better, ’cause seriously, who’s gonna want that big of a chunk of Pluot on their toast? I also now know roughly how long the process is. So, all-in-all, this was a good thing.