For this weeks recipe, I thought I'd try something new and have partnered with Ashley Adamant from the blog Practical Self Reliance to do a recipe exchange. She created this wonderful pectin free, wild foraged plum jam that is easily made at home, even with no canning experience.
If foraging isn't your cup of tea Ashley has included instructions for using commercially grown plums as well. You can find Ashley at www.practicalselfreliance.com as well as on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Wild Plum Jam
Huge crops of wild plums ripen at the edge of woodlands across North America each fall, and most are left to the squirrels. The plums are small, only slightly bigger than a cherry, but most are flavorful and sweet. With a bit of added sugar, wild plums cook into a tasty wild foraged jam without any added pectin.
In Vermont, the first wild plums ripen in early September and individual trees continue producing all the way through October and the first frosts of winter. Unlike commercial plums, that have been bred for size and intense sweetness, wild plums are small and often tart. Plums don’t come true to seed, and each wild plum tree will produce fruit with a slightly different taste.
Some will be pleasant for fresh eating, but many have hints of bitterness and tanning, and they can pucker the mouth. Once you add a bit of sugar, all that pucker turns into complexity of flavor.
Historically, wild apples with tart or bitter flavors were prized additions to homemade cider. When you’re pressing apples for cider, it’s important to balance sweetness with acid and tannin to create a more rounded flavor. Wild plum jam has that rounded flavor, rather than the one dimensional sweetness of many commercial jams.
Wild plum skins tend to contain most of the “character” and have more bitter flavor. If you’d like a milder jam, strain out the peels early in the cooking process. I leave them in because I feel they add a beautiful color to the finished jam, as well as a bit of texture. They also contain a good bit of pectin, which helps the jam thicken more quickly.
I like to pit the wild plums with a cherry pitter before making jam, and since I don’t have to strain out the seeds, the jam also keeps a chunky texture and the colorful plum skins.
After pitting, the plums can go into the pot whole or quickly chopped, depending on your preference. The plums will need a bit of liquid added at the beginning to prevent them from scorching on the bottom of the pot, and I add a bit of lemon juice to the jam at this point for safety.
I didn’t use to be this careful in my canning, and I happily put away jams and canned fruits without added lemon juice. Fruits are acidic, and in my mind, they didn’t need any added acid to reach a safe pH for canning. It wasn’t until I was canning peaches, and I read that some varieties of peaches, namely white peaches, aren’t acidic enough to can.
Fruits need to have a pH below 4.6 to be canned without additional acid, and commercial plums generally have a pH between 2.8 and 4.6. Some plums are dangerously close to the safe line, and when you’re using wild plums there’s no way to know if they’re acidic enough. They tend to taste more acidic than store bought, but a tiny bit of lemon juice is a good thing to add to be sure.
Most of my homemade jams are low sugar recipes, regardless of whether or not they used wild or conventional ingredients. There’s just no need to add an absurd amount of sugar to a wild strawberry jam when they’re already so sweet, and less sugar generally means you can taste the fruit better. That doesn’t quite hold true with wild plums. Don’t skimp on the sugar when making wild plum jam, trust me on this one. Weight the plums, and add granulated sugar at a 1 to 1 ratio by weight. If you like sweet jam, you might want to add even a bit more than that.
Plums, lemon juice and sugar is all you need to make a wild plum jam that’s safe for canning. The fruit already contains plenty of pectin, and don’t require any store bought pectin.
Substitutions for Wild Plums
Wild plums can be found in just about any climate or region where wild apples grow. They ripen from August through October, though it’ll be later in more northern climates. If you cant find wild plums, store bought plums can be substituted. To get the pucker of a wild plum jam, add in one part cranberries for every 3 parts plum. Since commercial plums tend to be much sweeter, make sure you reduce the sugar by ⅓ to ½.
Wild Plum Jam Recipe
This simple wild plum jam recipe is written to be scaled. For every pound of plums, add in 1 pound of sugar and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice.
- 1 lb Wild Plums
- 1 lb sugar
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- Pit the plums and place them into a thick bottomed pot.
- Add in the lemon juice and cook for a few minutes, until the plums begin to release their juices.
- Add in sugar and stir. Simmer, stirring often for about 10 minutes.
- When the jam thickens, pour it into prepared canning jars. At this point, the jam can either be stored in the refrigerator or processed for 10 minutes in a water bath canner. After a 10 minute process, turn of the heat, wait 5 more minutes and then remove the jars from the canner.
- Allow the jars to cool, and after 24 hours place any unsealed jars in the refrigerator and use within a few weeks.
Recipe
Wild Plum Jam
Ingredients
- 4.5 lb Wild Plums
- 4.5 lb sugar
- 4.5 tablespoon lemon juice
If Using Commercial Plums
- 1.5 lb Fresh or Frozen Cranberries
Instructions
- Pit the plums and place them into a thick bottomed pot.
- Add in the lemon juice and cook for a few minutes, until the plums begin to release their juices.
- Add in sugar and stir. Simmer, stirring often for about 10 minutes. If using commercially grown plums make sure you reduce the sugar by ⅓ to ½ to compensate for the naturally sweeter fruit.
- When the jam thickens, pour it into prepared canning jars. At this point, the jam can either be stored in the refrigerator or processed for 10 minutes in a water bath canner.
- After a 10 minute process, turn of the heat, wait 5 more minutes and then remove the jars from the canner.
- Allow the jars to cool, and after 24 hours place any unsealed jars in the refrigerator and use within a few weeks.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition info is auto-generated. This information is an estimate; if you are on a special diet, please use your own calculations.
Terry D Gordon
The raccoons have blessed me with a super sweet wild plum tree. I just harvested these plums and ended up with 2 lbs of pitted plums. I have eaten tart wild plums but this little tree gifts the sweetest plums I have ever tasted. I will try your recipe skins on and half the sugar. With your experience do you think this jam will need extra sweetener or more cooking time to set up?
Chef Markus Mueller
It is very hard to know without seeing the jam cooking in the pot. You could always cool a small amount and see how it sets up and then adjust the main batch from there.
Meghan
Hi how many wild plums make 1 pound?
Chef Markus Mueller
Hi Meghan, the weight measurement is given as all wild fruit (and even commercial fruit) will differ in weight based on several factors such as size, maturity, sugar content, and moisture content. The weight measurement is important to insure the recipe ratio works. As all fruit would differ in weight it would be very difficult to 'guess' what one pound of wild plums would look like for you. Your best bet is to invest in a kitchen scale and weigh what you have available to you and adjust the recipe accordingly.
Gestur Davidson
I just made a batch of Wild (aka American) Plum jam with this recipe. I used half the 1:1 sugar as I had these plums from a local Farmers Market and they were very ripe. I also added 1/4 cup of Louis Roque La Vieille Prune Plum Brandy from Gascony! Beautiful hue, aroma and flavor that, yes, you notice that added, extraordinary flavor from this wonderful plum brandy unlike any other.
Sonia Hvozdulycz
Wild plums don't need any lemon juice. They are plenty sour.
Charleen
We have 4 wild plum trees in our yard. (interior of BC). I've already pitted and food processed my plums, Any idea the ratio of plums to sugar for jam?
Chef Markus Mueller
Hi Charleen, yes the ratio used in our recipe is one pound of sugar for every pound of wild plum. If using commercially grown plums which tend to be sweeter, consider reducing the sugar to prevent the jam being overly sweet. This is something you'll need to experiment with depending on the tartness of your plums.
K in Colorado
Hi. Thanks for the recipe and tips.
Following another recipe I found someplace, I've found that using lime juice instead of lemon juice is the better option for plums. The lemon clashes somewhat with the plum flavor, but the lime juice enhances it. Add some cardamon for spiced plum jam.
Chef Markus Mueller
Thanks for the feedback K, I'll have to try the lime juice! Love the idea of adding cardamom aswell!
Nancy
Interesting - I'll try this. I've found that lime juice also works better for blueberries than lemon does.
Riane
Not sure what happened with my recipe but this turned into plum syrup.... I used 2lbs wild plums, 2lbs sugar, and about 3tbsp lemon juice. It thickened up but only to a syrup consistency, even after blending everything (including the skins). It was insanely sweet too. Any ideas?
Chef Markus Mueller
Hi Riane, Did you use wild plums or ones purchased at the grocery store? Commercially grown plums are generally much sweeter than the wild variety which would explain why it turned out so sweet. As suggested in the recipe, you could also add some cranberries to the jam to add some tartness to it. The amount of water content in the fruit would also affect the consistency. You could cook the jam longer to reduce the amount of liquid present. I hope that helps.
Brett
Wild plums have lots of pectin so this should not be a problem if you have cooked down (reduced) your jam enough. Always test. Some use a cold plate that is kept in the freezer then dribble some of your jam on it. If it becomes "jam like" on the plate, it should be ready. I prefer a more scientific approach, which is to measure the temperature. Sea level temperature of 221°F is supposed to be jam, 219° syrup and so on adjusted for elevation. At 900 ft ASL 219 is my jam temp, though I prefer a runnier jam and cook mine to 216-218°F.
Terra
Could it be she used 3 tbs rather than 1 per lb?
Shirleen Holt
The author is too humble. This is by far the best jam I've ever had, and when I give away jars to friends, they tell me it's the best jam they've ever had. A friend has yellow and red wild plum trees that yield so much fruit in August I can fulfill "orders" of three dozen 16-ounce jars until well past Christmas.
As noted in the article, the key to the jam's bright, fresh fruity flavor is the skin-to-pulp ratio. The skins give the jam a tartness that tastes more like a marmalade than the sugary jam made with large plums.
I use a cherry pitter and check each plum before adding it to the bowl. (Even with this method, the small pits can easily hid in the fruit folds and end up in your jar, so the extra care is needed.)
Unfortunately, I've never had a batch set without using pectin. I do a ratio of 5 lbs fruit, 5 lbs sugar, lemon juice and one box pectin.