Jam, certo or bernardin pectin? and liquid or powder?

The one time I made jam (almost 20 years ago, from wild blackberries I'd picked) I used only sugar.  This meant lots and lots of testing for set (a dollop of jam on a cold ceramic plate should 'skin' over and resist running) but in the end the jam was great.  I didn't have a pressure cooker at the time, so I just kept the jars and lids in a big pot of boiling salted water until needed.  I do understand that not all fruits have enough natural pectin to do this, however.  And actually, I seem recall vowing to use pectin the next time!

I keep checking my PMs and my faxes, remind, but none of your plum jam has shown up yet!!

Sorry unionist, must have got stuck in the ghost in the machine, maybe they like plum jam too. :D

Out in Sooke, blackberries grow wild everywhere, am going to try digging up some canes next time I go down there and see if they grow up here, as they do grow up north further too. There is also some that grow wild out in Saanich too along Island View beach.

Those yellow plums on the Island make fantastic wine. If I had enough, would make wine with them not jam. :D

Though used for plum sauce they are good too.

We saved some seeds from the plums from Vernon, going to see if we can get them to grow here. Winteres just do not get that cold anymore, and we can always build houses for them to winter them over, if they do start.

Interesting thread!  Thanks for dropping in, Emerie.

remind, I'll take a jar of plum jam too, please.  I'll send you my address by PM. ;) ;)

In the Star (Toronto) today

http://www.thestar.com/living/food/article/697401

I do use a funnel, I sterilize all equipment and wash the fruit -- maybe not well enough I guess? How are you supposed to do it? It might just come down to a really remarkable lack of manual dexterity on my part. My sealers never really pop hard no matter what I do. I think the jar might already be too cold by the time I get the jam in, even though I'm doing one at a time. Or maybe with all the spillage, my rims aren't clean enough or something. Anyway, I just add lemon to the jam, keep it in the cold room and try to use it up fast. I still end up tossing about one in five jars though for not looking just quite right.

It's really neat to have Emerie come in like that.

If I was doing jam, particularly since I've never done it, I'd follow instructions to the letter.

One thing I'm curious about though, is whether using hydrogen peroxide is perhaps a better way of sterilizing jars and stuff.  I note that on the show "How It's Made" one company uses hydrogen Peroxide to sterilize jars.  However, they didn't mention if it's the same percentage solution one finds at the drug store.

I  will confess to using Hydrogen Peroxide for jars, but it's for food stuffs that are stored for a short time in the fridge.

No offence taken whatsoever, Brian, I know it's bizarre. I add lemon with the berries so it gets boiled too. As for spillage, well, it's a remarkable accomplishment that I do regularly manage to do it even using a funnel.

BTW It's not only Bernardin that suggests water-bath processing for fruit products. All of the university extension services as well as the US Centre for Disease Control make this recommendation. Typically with these paternalistic public health advisories though, they don't give you the underlying science to allow for a truly informed assessment of the relative risk. From a lay perspective the acid should make fruit products inhospitable for botulism, and mould is less likely with the sugar, more easily identified when it does occur, and shouldn't cause acute illness in any event. So what really is the risk, for high-acid high-sugar products?

I found this article that suggests that an adequate seal can be formed without heat-processing (ie inverting the full jars, usually) but not as reliably, and the seal is not as good as when you water-process. Mould can still occur in jams, for example from spores in the air in the head space. Some of these moulds may not be as harmless as previously thought; they might be carcinogenic. Foods with a looser vacuum seal are also not as shelf-stable long term, and might change colour, flavour or texture sooner. This is the problem I am having with my jam and I don't know if it means it is unsafe, I'm throwing it out just to be sure.

http://www.fcs.uga.edu/ext/pubs/fdns/FDNS-E-37-1.pdf

I read elsewhere that oven air doesn't heat foods through as uniformly as by boiling. Surely though it should still be more than adequate for jam. If the only real risk is the potential of a possible carcinogen, and that only in contaminated jars, you'd have to be eating an awful lot of spoiled jam for it to have any effect.

"Oven canning is extremely dangerous as the heat from a dry oven may not dirstribute the heat evently, and the jars can explode.  This is called themal shoc, please check your facts.   Certo manufactures pectin and not jars, we are the leaders in the making of jars for over 100 years  and we have the experience and knowledge behind us. "

But doesn't this jive with what we know about glass?  The kind of stresses that can be built into a piece of glass can't allways be seen with the naked eye, and tempering (are run of the mill jars even tempered?)  may not allways relieve all the stresses from the manufacturing process. 

I'm as suspicious as they come; and I do note that packaging and product instructions of many things-- shampoo, laundry soap, the list can go on and on, is purposefully designed to encourage the user to use more than what's really needed.

However, I relate to the fact that I participate in making a product that if used or installed incorrectly can not just hurt people, but kill.  And when it comes to safety, the idea of using safety as an excuse to sell a couple extra parts, and create a few minutes of work for myself just doesn't enter into it.

I'd be inclined to take Emrie's advice at face value.

Vehicles can seriously hurt or kill people. So can low-acid canned food, because in the right set of circumstances, that airless environment allows for the growth and development of a specific bacterium with lethal toxins: botulism. Personally I want nothing whatsoever to do with botulism, which is truly a nasty exposure causing respiratory failure, and it is for that reason that I will not eat eg. stew and soup, or even vegetables -- low-acid foods -- which may have been improperly canned.

But can jam kill people? Jam is acidic, which prevents the proliferation of botulism. This is the same chemical process we rely on in eating honey, which contains botulism spores. Honey can kill infants under one year old because their little digestive systems are less acidic, allowing the neurotoxins to develop internally. Adults and older children have to eat the toxins to get sick.

Other bacteria do grow in acidic environments but they are not generally harmful in small quantities. We eat lots of bacteria as it is, and for anyone with a reasonably robust immune system, it doesn't cause any problems. As for mould, the sugar in the jam inhibits mould growth but might not entirely prevent it. Mould has been linked to cancer. Again, we eat small quantities of mould all the time. It's probably best to avoid it, but the risk of contracting cancer from a few mould spores in the occasional jar of jam has got to be pretty well zero -- certainly much less than for example, the risks of eating meat cooked over high temperatures.

People in charge of promoting public health naturally want to put out the safest, most idiot-proof recommendations. To me, that detracts from my willingness to automatically defer to them. I want to know what the recommendations are based on, and if those circumstances don't apply to me, or if the risk is negligible, and particularly if there is a downside to following the recommendations (like the "pain in the arse" and deterrence factors noted here), that will influence my decision.

I guess some people might say that's arrogant.

It's interesting to me to note that the total incidence of food poisoning has actually gone up over recent years, directly correlated to our increased consumption of raw food -- the most common cause of outbreaks.

That puts the moral campaigners on the horns of a dilemma. Fresh vegetables are more virtuous. But by failing to cook them, we risk exposure to nasty bugs like e.coli.

As for re-washing that already pre-washed bag of spinach, evidently there are two problems. One, the contents of the bag are quite likely more sterile than our kitchens. Two, even if there were some e.coli on the edge of a leaf, washing would not remove it but could distribute it around the rest of the produce, sickening more members of our family than if we had not taken the trouble.

Quote:

Public health experts admit they are uncertain how much warning they should give the public about vegetables since there is often little people can do to protect themselves. Meat usually becomes safe if properly cooked. But systemically contaminated lettuce frequently remains a threat no matter how much it is washed.

"This is a question of educational strategy that hasn't been worked out yet," said Ewen Todd, director of the Food Safety Policy Center at Michigan State University. "Do we want to discourage people from eating fresh fruits and vegetables? Of course not. But we haven't worked out exactly what our message should be."

I do note that the numbers in this article are quite a bit higher than those alluded to in the eatallaboutit blog I linked to above. I guess those numbers were only referring to deaths from canned food. This article shows how much more of a risk we take from other kinds of food -- raw fruits and vegetables in almost equal proportion to improperly cooked or stored meat.

http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-06/12-17-06/01perspective.htm

Quote:

systemically contaminated lettuce

The easiest solution is that they stop contaminating lettuce and spinach within the system.

I still think taking jars out of the oven with oven mits is a hell of a lot safer than popping them into and out of a boiling water bath with thongs.

I think you have a valid point there, though I supose if you have the right tongs, it shouldn't be too unsafe.  But yes, one wonders how many emergency room visits there are over exploding jars vs. nasty scalds.   I'd bet on the scalds being more frequent-- but that's just a guess.

Anybody know how glass is made?    It is a hot process, isn't it?

Yes, it is.  But the stresses locked up-- or not-- depend on the rate of cooling.  Pyrex, for example, is what they call "tempered" glass. Although, I think the proper term for what they do is called annealing (or would be if we were talking metals).  After  the  original molding, the glass is  allowed to cool.  Then it's heated again, and then cooled at a certain rate.  This unlocks-- or should unlock-- stresses built into the glass through uneven cooling that is inevitable in the original molding process.

Emrie's point was that your oven might not distribute temperature evenly, and produce a thermal shock, whereas boiling water won't.

Maybe we should send this into "Mythbusters" ?

I just made a large, two pot batch of speghetti sauce, and put them in Bernardin jars.  I don't follow all the proceedures, just make sure everything is clean, because the jars go right in the fridge.

I've never made jam, and it's not something I'm into.  But, I think I'd like to resurect the family tradition of pickling.  I wish I would have paid more attention to Mom and Dad when they did it.