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Lots of bramble berries starting to go black. I intend making jam. Question is, as I don't have any jam jars, does jam keep OK in Kilner jars? Any help or other suggestion appreciated

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Kilner jars are fine.  See life.wilko.com/making-your-first-preserve for hints and tips.

 

Blackberries freeze well though it is best to lay them out on a plastic tray to freeze separately so that they don't form one big mass.  Bag them up when frozen.

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This is such a coincidence!  I went out this evening for a walk and picked enough blackberries for 2 big crumbles.   They are lovely big berries - not the small ' gritty' ones that grow on roadsides.   I may add some apple as well then I can make 3 crumbles - one to eat, one to freeze and one to give away .   I love picking free food .... 

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If you've got a spare one Margie, send it this way. I absolutely love apple and blackberry pie, with a drop of custard.x

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Don’t think it would survive the journey, BK.!!

Are there no blackberries in Sussex you can go and find?  
Paul  is the one who usually goes out blackberry picking  - he knows several places in the village that have good blackberries.... shh don’t tell anyone else, though

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Hi Margie I keep looking for Blackberries when i go out for a walk, but up to now most of them are still green, the only one's that are ready are at the bottom of the bush, and these you don't pick. Just incase a dog has picked up his leg for a wee.

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Mary,  look for the bushes with large berries which are the ‘cultivated’ kind.  Don’t know how they manage to find their way into the hedgerows when there are no gardens nearby... I ignore all the little hard berries on the roadside bushes - they are still green anyway.

I agree about not picking berries that are low down !!!

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Got a bit of white druplet disorder on my thornless cultivar, probably caused by the recent hot spell.  I may have to go a picking wild fruit instead.  I tasted a few wild ones this morning while out strolling and have to say they were less tart than my home-grown ones.  I do like an apple and blackberry crumble but the squirrels have stripped my two apple trees of every last fruit.

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I had a go at making a blackberry pie last year but it was all juice. I have seen no mention of pectin yet. I thought it was normal to use that in jam.

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8 hours ago, The Engineer said:

Got a bit of white druplet disorder on my thornless cultivar, probably caused by the recent hot spell.  I may have to go a picking wild fruit instead.  

The large berries we pick are borne on thorny branches so they must be an old variety of the newer cultivated ones.  The fact that they grow in hedgerows on country lanes suggests that they must be old as there are no gardens nearby.  whatever...... they are delicious!

 

Malcolm,  I used to make jam many moons ago and I seem to remember adding pectin to help it set because certain fruit doesn't have enough naturally.  I believe you can use cornflour to thicken the juice when making a fruit pie but I'm sure mr google will tell you!

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13 hours ago, The Pianoman said:

Lots of bramble berries starting to go black. I intend making jam. Question is, as I don't have any jam jars, does jam keep OK in Kilner jars? Any help or other suggestion appreciated

You can put jam in any container as long as it has a good seal. I usually make loads of jam every year but last year I still had many jars left so I didn't bother. This year I haven't even thought about it. Pity you don't live nearby I have 3 storage boxes of jars doing nothing so you could have had some. I use Kilner jars as well as old jam jars replacing the caps with new ones every time. Good luck.

Shame as this is the first year that I've had to buy jam

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Margie, I would love to go blackberrying but alas I'm still on self isolating lockdown. Wifey and I have now been at home for about 140 odd days. ( We both are under the ' vulnerable, at risk umbrella).

 

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The problem with jam making is that you get a glut of fruit and think that making jam would be a good idea. You make more than you can possibly eat and get fed up with the same jam day after day. It’s easier to buy it and get a choice. We’ve lots of fruit, currently a glut of greengages, which are delicious, fresh straight from the tree but are never the same when you cook with them or turn them into jam. Our next glut will be damsons which I eat from the tree whilst I’m mowing the orchard. As for apples, we’ll have more Bramleys than we know what to do with. I love apple pie but Bramleys do tend to mush down and loose their firmness. Our best ever apple was an Annie Elizabeth which was both a good eater and cooker. Sadly the tree was destroyed by the Rambling Rector rose which engulfed it and I had to take the chainsaw to both!

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Try bottling the fruit. That's what I'm going to do when the freestone peaches are ready. Apricots aren't particularly cheap at the moment but there's always the possibility that someone will present me with a case of them ( in exchange for a couple of cakes) some fruit unless you have bushes is impossible to preserve here and thinking about it I never see blackberries, red currants or similar other than in the supermarkets. Grapes of all sorts are in abundance, then I get to the stage that I don't know what else to do with them.

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Bottled fruit is nothing like fresh. We pick the fresh fruit, eat what we can and chuck the rest on the compost heap. Bottled fruits and jams just seem to get left on the shelf. Apples are only any good when you can get the fresh English varieties. The out of season imported ones are tasteless. I just don't think its worth all the hassle in making preserves.

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Blackberry coulis is good.... lots of recipes on the internet.  It keeps for a few days in the fridge and can be frozen in smallish containers

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Blackberries are high in pectin so you shouldn't need to add it separately or to use jam sugar (sugar with pectin) rather than regular sugar.  You can get 1lb jam jars at Aldi for 28p each but you have to empty 1lb of their strawberry jam out of each one before use.

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Peaches and apricots when preserved correctly are the best to put away for winter. I make up a syrup when I preserve them and there's no difference between those that I do and tinned. But I agree fresh is better but when someone gives you a couple of veg boxes full what do you do? I'm hoping this year that someone is going to upload some veg onto me to make a preserved veg salad. ( giardiniera) Fruit in summer is so plentiful that farmers just leave the fruit to fall and rot. It's so cheap too that it's an incentive to preserve it, all you need is a bit of time. 

Ive just remembered , years ago my dad gave me some giant ,thornless blackberry or were they raspberry canes ! Doesn't matter anyway but we had the first years crop and I was looking forward to the following year. My husband decided to give the garden a good clean up. When I went to have a look at the tidy garden I realized the canes were missing. He thought they were dried up sticks. I was furious but forgave him because although he didn't know anything about gardening he knows how to cook. smile2

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Are they a type of plum? We have some similar here.

Was almost right they are sloes from the family of plums . Did  a google search and photo comes up

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