Simple preserves: How to make blackberry Jam and Jelly!

look at that it's amazing that was in the woods just a minute ago hey there folks this is josh stoney ridge farmer welcome back to another beautiful day here on the stoney ridge farm the sun's coming up it's hot outside and it's blackberry season so look at this bush it is absolutely loaded down with delicious blackberries and i'm gonna have to eat that one mmm oh god that's so good so sweet so what we're gonna be doing today is we're gonna do a little bit of martha stewart living here we're going to go ahead and we're going to pick some wild blackberries and we're going to make blackberry jelly and blackberry jam one or the other i'm not positive so come along today as we show you guys how to live a little more holistic a little more country and if making jelly isn't your thing i still think you should watch this because there's nothing better than a gift from a family member like jelly think about christmas time or thanksgiving or holidays or anything like that you can bring a jar of your own jelly and jam and man it just puts a smile on people's face guys so come along we're going to teach you how to pick wild berries and make some jam jamon mon [Music] oh all right guys i hope you enjoyed that little intro man the dogs are loving the pond this time of year it is absolutely hot it's one of those days where it's 88 degrees and feels like 97 i'm starting to sweat i'm sweating out my morning coffee here but we're going to go ahead and start loading down on blackberries and this is a five gallon bucket big shout out to my sister for making this for me that's very awesome thank you tracy and we're going to use quartz so these quart containers came from the chinese food place back in the day when i had coveted so what we're going to do here we're going to do all natural we're going to do no pectin we're going to do blackberries and sugar those are the only two ingredients this is going to be a fun short video and we've got a lot of picking to do if you guys can't see this these berry bushes are absolutely loaded i anticipate we're going to have enough blackberry jam and jelly to give out to all my family members this year so if you're watching you're probably going to get one for christmas let's get busy okay guys let me give you a little blackberry picking 101. take your finger back here and hold the plant as you pick them off because those ripe extra ripe berries and these are small berries but we've got some great old big fatty ones those extra ripe berries will tend to fall off if you don't hold it still and this will save your fingers from getting poked now you can see there's plenty of red berries on here so we'll get another picking this year off these blackberries so this isn't all that we'll be canon this year awesome gorgeous blackberries some of them are absolutely huge now you might notice that some blackberries are much much larger and fruitier plump than other blackberries that's cool man those are the ones that you want on your farm so when you pick blackberries you want to make sure that you're not picking them like right after a rainstorm because that tends to knock the sweetness level down on your blackberry so pick them in the dry part of the year if it's been dry for a couple days and the blackberries are ripe on the vine then jump on it man absolutely i've gotta make my way all the way down this row we're probably gonna have somewhere in the neighborhood of half a five gallon bucket of blackberries this is gonna be awesome guys [Music] it is hard to believe that these are just sitting there waiting for you to pick them man that's awesome not letting things go to waste and there's plenty of blackberries way back in here so we're going to give you a little bit of a blackberry uh lesson on on how these critters grow so you see this cane right here these canes with berries on them this year will not produce berries next year the new growth will produce berries and you can see an image of the new growth there are no berries on that growth but next year that'll be the fruiting growth so we want to take care of the new growth that doesn't have any berries on them we don't want to cut those so that we'll have them for next year there's a couple plants i want to talk to you about that are right over in here that i saw as i was picking blackberries and we'll tell you some of the old-timers like to use these plants to make salads and seasonings so up in here is an interesting little plant this is called a pokeberry okay don't eat those berries but i'm told you can make wine out of it the old timers used to pick the leaves of the pokeberry plant and make a salad out of it i'm told if you want to go the bathroom fast make pokeberry salad so that's poke salad or pokeberry then up in here you can see this cane right here has a different color that is a raspberry cane okay so we've got some raspberries raspberries have all but drying up right here but that's next year's fruiting raspberry cane right there same principle these are the fruiting canes of blackberries and they're all red because they're just not ripe yet so you can see there's a whole lot to pick and there's another pokeberry right there you really don't want to eat the pokeberries and you can see all through here there are different raspberries and there's one more plant i want to talk to you about so we've got raspberry here raspberry here so next year we'll have a bumper crop of raspberries this is called sumac okay and sumac puts out little seeds i'll see if i can find one with seeds on it so here is a flowering sumac okay this flower will eventually turn into a seed head and that seed is useful in spices so that's sumac there's a lot of stuff going on right in here guys there's a whole lot of stuff going on there's wild cherry there's all sorts of stuff in these hedgerows so if you open your eyes and open your mind you can learn a whole lot about just the old crap that's growing off the side of the road all this stuff has awesome uses so we've got blueberries in here we've got raspberries in here we've got blackberries sumac poke salad wild cherry all sorts of stuff let's get in the kitchen after we fill this bucket success man we got almost up to the feet on the cow on the stoney ridge farm bucket look at that this is somewhere in the neighborhood look how yummy somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 maybe 25 pounds of blackberries holy cow man i'm gonna have so many blackberries we're basing all this off of a four cup recipe in other words four cups of blackberries four cups of sugar just that simple all we're doing is cooking down blackberries to sugar or with sugar so some of the tools you're gonna need you're gonna need a strainer just like this guy right here i'm gonna need a great big pot just like this guy right here and it doesn't have to be that big if you're only doing three or four cups it's just equal parts sugar to equal parts blackberries not by weight but by volume we'll use a measuring cup fill it up to four cups i believe that's the size of my measuring cup you'll need a measuring cup yup four cups or one quart and i'm gonna say we probably have six quarts we've got a lot here you'll need a potato masher or you can just mash it with your hands or you can mash it with ladle with a spoon and we'll need a flat nosed stirring spoon and you can use a spatula whatever you want to use we want to be able to get in the bottom and rub the bottom of that pan right there okay so that we don't stick we want to get in the corners and stir that so it doesn't stick you can put a splash of lemon juice so if you want to buy one lemon and squeeze some lemon juice in there it's totally acceptable if you're gonna make jam then you're just gonna crush it up and you're gonna start cooking if you're gonna make jelly you're gonna crush it up you're gonna cook and you're gonna strain it and you can strain it with some cheesecloth this is a little roll of cheesecloth you can buy this in your little local hobby store or local big box store or we can use a strainer just like this this is going to clog pretty quick where the cheesecloth is going to let some larger particles go through maybe a few seeds maybe not if you have dietary restrictions and you can't eat the seeds then double up the cheesecloth or use a strainer just like this so first step we're going to take the berries over here and we're going to rinse them off and we're going to put them in this to drain so you guys will probably notice i've got my jars all laid out right here another thing we need to do while we're rinsing our berries is to have a pot of boiling water on the stove what we want to do is sterilize these jars they're going to be in the autoclave basically and autoclave basically sterilizes the jars you don't want any bacteria growing in your jars because if you have bacteria then you're going to have to refrigerate them the way we're doing this you won't have to refrigerate this stuff will keep almost indefinitely it'll keep for years and years so we're going to go ahead and get some water started water boiling if you don't want to boil water you can put them on a baking dish set the oven at about 250 degrees and leave them in there for about 45 minutes to an hour or something like that i like to boil them and then sit them out let them cool just a little bit and then i'll put my jam in there my jelly [Music] crank it up on high now we're going to rinse our berries so while we're rinsing our berries we're going to go ahead and we're going to pour them into a measuring cup so that we know exactly how many cups of berries that we have here this is a little bit of a challenge with only one person however can hang that right on the edge of that pan or pot and we'll just gently pour them out one nice full four quarts there's two there's three we'll say three and a half uh we'll add another half cup right there so we got basically almost a gallon of berries right here then we're gonna run cold water into our berries for our first rinse cycle before we drain them okay we're doing cold water again we're just gonna fill this up about three quarters and you'll see some of the trash will float right to the top like little leaves and stuff like that this stuff was outside man so there's going to be a little bit of trash in there and don't be surprised if you see maybe a little bug or two now as we're prepping for our canning we're going to go ahead and put a little bit of water in here and we're going to go ahead and put our canning jar lids in here and we've got a lot of canning jar lids so we're just going to separate them out put them in there we've got some wide mouth and we've got some small mouth we'll get those warm most of the time bad berries will come to the top all the bad stuff comes to the top give her another little rinse a little shake let that drain just a little bit and then we'll put it in the pot repeat this process over and over hey we've drained for just a few minutes and this is going to be the magic pot right here this is going to be where the magic happens man look at that that is absolutely awesome so we're going to add sugar to this but first we're going to smash them up good you could use a food processor to smash them up or you could just simply do what i'm doing right here a potato smasher that's it just give her a little tap and get the smooshing so we're going to keep on smushing and working this and we're actually going to start working our sugar in this is going to seem like a lot of sugar equal parts sugar to blackberries so in other words three and a half of these full one quart mixing jars and we'll go ahead and start mixing that in mushing it in together you don't need to add water and we don't need to add pectin because pectin is naturally occurring in the fruit so as we cook it down the pectin will come out and that will cause our jelly and jam to be thickened and stay upright in the jar and spread awesome just keep on working it you can see the consistency is nice and it's gonna be oh it's gonna be delicious man still a little tart because again it takes a lot of sugar to make this jam a little more sugar oh look at that it's like it's snowed on the blackberry farm here yeah a little more equal parts keep on mixing we can go ahead and put this on the eye on the stove and keep on smushing and mixing we're gonna put it on a medium high heat okay and we're gonna keep on stirring so make sure you size your eye appropriately to the uh size pot you have also okay and those of you who don't think you can can on a flat top stove here's proof if i had gas i'd be using gas but i don't have it this is going to cook down probably over 35 45 minutes maybe even a little bit longer we want to sterilize it by cooking the crap out of it and we want to make sure we kill all the germs in there and want to get it hot enough so that the jars will seal up and now while that cooks we can go ahead and start putting jars over into our large pot of water right here so they can start sterilizing you want to be careful while you do this you want to set these guys in very gently and let them get sterilized you don't want to put too many in at once so we're going to be rotating jars in and out of here the whole time we're stirring and cooking our delicious blackberry jam these are canning tongs you'll need canning tongs and you'll also need a canning type funnel just like that that fits down in the jar and that tells you how much head space which is space at the top of the jar pro tip don't wear a white shirt you'll notice i changed shirts my shirt was soaking wet with sweat i actually came in and showered off because man here in north carolina critters like to bite you little stinging insects and little things we call ticks and sugars like to get on you so i had to get in and rinse those guys off so i've got my towels laid out here and while things are getting settled for my jelly i'm gonna go ahead and get this ready now i have this sitting down in the pot and this will be our jelly pot okay so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go ahead and lay out that strainer or colander and we're going to take cheesecloth and we're going to line it this big roll is enough cheesecloth to last you a long time we're going to do two layers why are we doing two layers so that when one clogs up we can just simply peel a layer back and get to the next layer hey guys we are on high heat now and we're about 25 minutes in and you'll notice this foam comes over the top it's okay what we're doing is cooking it down be sure you keep it nice and stirred and let it go on and cook let it go on and boil if it starts sticking real bad in the bottom of the pan you know you need to turn your heat down just a little bit it's just about done they've been boiling about 25 minutes right there awesome and we'll set them up right see them steaming we'll set them up right over here on a oh my goodness gracious we just boiled over got a stir stir baby stir see what happens that was a disaster you can't make stuff up like that so our jars are ready to go ahead over here and we'll set them out and let them steam clean themselves in other words there will be no water left in here because it'll all steam out because of the heat so mild crisis avoided i got the jam or jelly off of the stove really quickly and i just took a piece of toast and went whoop and wiped it up and got myself a good piece of jelly toast it's good stuff so we're getting close to where we're going to go ahead and start jarring this stuff and we're actually going to go ahead and run some of it through the filter system so that we have both jam and jelly and the way we test this is we're going to take a wooden spoon just like this guy here and we're going to dip in now this is a room temperature plate we want this to solidify at room temperature so we're going to let it cool for just a minute let's do the finger test oh yeah so this will continue to solidify in the jar it's absolutely delicious it's absolutely wonderful and you can see it's solidifying pretty good uh maybe about 20 more minutes with stir and cook stir and cook we're trying to get the water out and and make it gel basically so let's go over here after about five more minutes and we're gonna start straining out some jelly all right man this stuff looks delicious and it's gonna be delicious so what i'll do is i will ladle out uh what i need to go in the strainer right here and then once we're done i'll take it and squeeze it out kind of take our ladle give her a little smush see all that pulp all that trash that we're getting out that's what we're trying to do get rid of that while this drains out we're gonna go ahead and put this back on the stove for about five more minutes get it nice and hot before we ladle it over into our containers now i'm using wide mouth jars and small mouth jars i'm going to use my small mouth jars this is the plan for my jam and my wide mouth jars for my jelly because the jam will be easier to get out with a spoon my theory okay just like i said we're going to scoop this up just like this and we're going to give it a twist you can see it's still dribbling down take that juice and just twist it out and smoosh it out you can see it coming okay so we're nice and tight right here we're gonna go ahead and take that ladle and smash on that there we go all that yummy juice out for the finale we've got our bowl with our canning funnel we're going to slip our canning funnel right here and we're going to ladle out right over top of this pot all of our deliciousness oh look at that this will be hot enough to seal it these are the small mouth oh kind of make note of how much it takes about four ladles full we'll reach in here with our little magnetic um grabber slip this guy off and into the next jar this is getting warm in my hand so i want to take a paper towel we're going to wipe off the lid if we got any on the lid we didn't get any so we're gonna grab this guy put the lid on and we're gonna hold this because it's hot man we're gonna hold it and we're gonna tighten it down as tight as we can get it and that's it we're gonna flip it upside down over here and let it cool what we're doing by flipping it over is allowing the rubber seal you can see this little rubber gasket we're allowing that rubber gasket to get hot and for it to expand and get squishy and seal up the jar look at that isn't that gorgeous man awesome i'm excited i can't wait for the holidays to share these guys we're gonna do all these and then we're gonna do one of the jelly so you can see what that looks like versus the jam you can see all the seeds in there that is jelly jam jelly delish i hope you enjoyed this food friday here on the stoney ridge i've got a lot of work to do got to get this all wrapped up all finished up thank you guys so much for joining me please jump in subscribe to the channel pound that like button i'd love to have you back it's an awesome time here on the stoney ridge i hope you guys learned something this is josh telling you don't let your kids be as dumb as the neighbors kids teach them something teach them something useful like this this is an awesome time guys thanks a lot we'll see you next time on the stoney ridge pound the like button subscribe to the channel hey there folks this is josh stoney red you're good and what better gift gift now you might notice that some blackberries are you might notice there out of kitchen towels i need more kitchen towels bath towel now here on a oh my goodness gracious we just boiled over stop