Our best friend is Mr Osmosis in producing a jam, that is
- low in sugar content
- needs minimal amount of work
- cheap
- retains vitamins and color
- offers cordial as a natural co-product
- thickens from natural pectin and no added thickening.
Let’s dice our fruit first, whatever you decided to make your jam out of. The peel is high in pectin, and – unless it’s hairy like the kiwi’s – easily processed into a smooth, edible texture by a hand-mixer. Unlike our grandmas, we can leave it on.
Place the diced fruit into a large pan, add 1:5 part sugar and place the lid on. Keep in a cool, dry place for 24 hours. By that time the fruit flesh should be dried out and you should have a good amount of lovely, cold-extracted cordial surrounding it.
What happened? Mr Osmosis worked miracles for us. The cell-membranes of the fruit flesh work as semi-permeable membranes. Through these membranes water exists freely but large molecules, like sugars are held back. The law of osmosis warrants that water will exit until it produces an equally concentrated liquid on both sides of the membrane. This means that the natural water content of the fruit flesh will exit the fruit until the cordial around it is diluted to the same state as the liquid inside the flesh. This way the water content of the fruit flesh will be reduced and the fruit dries out in cold temperature, without lengthy boiling that destroys heat-sensitive molecules such as Vitamin C. At the same time, the natural water content of the fruit along with smaller molecules exit the cell membranes to provide healthy, nourishing, natural and raw cordial.
Place cordial in a different pan. Flavour the liquid with lemon juice or citric acid. Remove the cordial into a glass bottle and consume fresh. Keeps in the fridge for about 7 days. You also can decide to preserve it, in which case boil the flavoured cordial for 20 minutes then preserve into glass bottles.
Heat the dried diced fruit and process with hand mixer until uniformly smooth. Boil for 20 minutes on a slow heat stirring frequently. Preserve.
Whoops, a pharmacist can preserve jams and cordials that last for years without any additives! I will share the magic in another post.