Apples in my Eye. Part One.

Of all the things to can in the whole world, I love the apple most.   You can do almost any kind of sweet preserve with it, and it's cheap to do in quantity. Which is important, because that's kind of the point of canning. I don't know about you, but I can't be fucked to spend three hours boiling and sterilizing shit to end up staring at the three sad pints of jam.   Which are now so precious you can't eat them, as they've come to represent an entire night of work and a filthy kitchen.

Hence, apples.  They are delicious in their own right, have tons of pectin and are a fantastic filler for more expensive fruits.  

Last night, my awesome niece Emma came over straight from the tattoo parlor and with a bag of hot peppers in hand for a canning date.  We had a couple pecks of Haralson apples, a bag of oranges, four bags of frozen blueberries, those peppers, and whatever we could find in the pantry.   

Here's one of the things we made up!  

Blueberry Ginger Apple Jam

8 cups of apple- peeled, cored, and chopped.

4 12 oz bags of frozen wild blueberries.

1 cup white sugar

1.5 cup dark brown sugar, packed.

3 inches of ginger (1 inch grated, 2 inches chunked)

1 package liquid certo if necessary

Basically, dump this in a big pot and boil it until it's lovely and bubbly and cooked down.  I grated some of the ginger right in, and also cut big slices of it and let it boil in the fruit to infuse it.  I picked it out later. Apples have tons of pectin, so you might not need the certo to make it set up, but it depends how much liquid is in the berries, and how long you want to let it cook down.   Ours took about an hour.

I hit this with the immersion blender, being careful of the molten heat, and it blended into a gorgeous silky jam.  Do this after the first 40 minutes of cooking, and then let it cook another half hour or so.  Add the certo after this step, if necessary.   

Alternately, you could turn the apples into a quick applesauce first (in the microwave, even), and then add the blueberries, sugar and ginger and cook it down on the stove.  If you don't have an immersion blender, that would probably work pretty well, and you could keep the texture of the whole berry.

You want it to get to a point where it's gelled but spreadable.   Cool a tablespoon of it on a cold plate now and then to check how it's doing.

I processed this for 25 minutes in a basic water bath.  It yielded about 13 pints- those 4 bags of blueberries on their own probably would have made 2 pints.  

WE ALL WIN.

Next time:  Apple Salsa.