Gooseberry Jam Recipe

Clean fruits

1. Rinse your gooseberries in clear water. You can add a dash of vinegar to your berries in some fresh water as this removes impurities and insects.
2. Top and tail your gooseberries. That means, cut off each end of your gooseberries.

Prep Jam

1. Place whole prepped gooseberries into a large pot. Turn on the heat and keep over a low setting.
2. Pour sugar into the pot over the fruits and stir sugar into the fruits. The sugar will melt with the heat.
3. Increase your stove heat to a medium-high level and bring to a rolling boil. Stir occasionally.
4. Once you get to that rolling boil, reduce the stove heat to a medium setting. Leave the jam to simmer and watch the gooseberries pop. Stir occasionally so that nothing sticks on at the bottom.
5. Cook down until the fruits start to appear glossy and translucent. This can take 30–50 minutes (depends on the pot, heat intensity and ripeness of the fruits).
6. When the fruits look done (glossy, translucent), blend with a hand blender (aka stick blender) or in a mixer/food processor. You can blend it chunky or smooth, it's up to you.
7. Take back to the pot and keep over the lowest heat setting for a few minutes. It will bubble a bit and this is very you need to be careful that it doesn't jump up and burn you or that it burns at the bottom of the pot. While it's on the fire, test if the jam has reached the gelling stage, so to say if it is set.
8. Test setting stage with a thermometer of 220 Fahrenheit (ca. 104 °C) or do the test with an ice-cold plate. Drop some hot jam on the ice-cold plate. Quickly try to move around the jam on the plate to see whether it is running or not. *see notes for explanation and process details.
9. When the jam is set, pour it still hot into clean sterilized jars almost up to the rim.
10. Lock tight with a clean sterilized lid and turn jar upside down to create a vacuum. Turn it back face up when the jar is not that hot anymore and store your homemade gooseberry jam as per my instructions (please see storing instructions in post).