Kitchen Garden Forum

For the first time my husband and I took a great deal of trouble netting over our greengage tree so we had a fighting chance with the birds! It worked and we have picked over eight pounds of fruit!
I made jam BUT.....all was going well and I was testing for setting point when it appeared the bottom was burning!
Panic set in and I stopped the boiling and put it all into jars. Its not bad but its certainly not solidly set!!
I used all the right equipment and followed all the right procedures - can anyone help? any suggestions for reboiling? Adding pectin at this stage?
Where do you buy pectin??
Sorry so long!!

You can get pectin in supermarkets in the home cooking section, or from a chemist. Or use lemon juice. But I'd just try reboiling and see how it goes. The sugar content might not have been right for your fruit or maybe they were too juicy and need the liquid reducing. It might need stirring almost continuously at this stage if you thought it was sticking. Hope something there will be of help.
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Granny

Did you use a wide pan? The reason for not using a maslin pan rather than a deep saucepan is to allow the evaporation whilst keeping the high temperature. The other possible cause would be trying to make too much jam at once - it's always better to make it in manageable amounts.

When I make plum or gage jam I always simmer the fruit first adding about 1 and 1/2 -2 pints of water to 6lb fruit, for about 30 mins before adding the sugar.

I would re-boil, gages shouldn't need any more pectin. Do the wrinkle test about every 10 mins.

Beryl.