Ingredients
350g Frozen Raspberries
350g Granulated sugar
put the raspberries and sugar together in a saucepan over a medium-low heat. Stir to mix
Continue to heat and stir occasionally until the jam comes to a boil. Reduce the heat to keep it to a rolling boil/simmer
After a couple of minutes put in a cooks thermometer and continue to simmer until the mixture reaches 105C. turn off the heat and pour (carefully) the hot jam into clean jars.
If you don't have a thermometer then wait about 5 mins and then place a drop onto a cold saucer. If the drop "skins" over when cool then the jam is ready. If it doesn't wait a minute and try again.
Method
OK not really something you can make a meal of, but certainly something you can eat. I love raspberries and I love raspberry jam - on toast, with croissants, rice pudding, yogurt - it has multiple uses. The contrasting flavours of sweet sugar and sour raspberries tooth puckeringly lovely. My problem is that buying raspberry jam in the shops gets you a very variable product and it is often over-priced.
So my thought process was this - why not use frozen raspberries to make Jam. I tried it, it works and produces fantastic jam. You can buy 350g of frozen raspberries for £2 - so you can make around 700g of jam for about £2.50. Because raspberries are high in pectin you dont need to add any, you can just use regular sugar and still get lovely, set Jam.
From a process point of view, when making Jam you are reducing the water content of the mixture and by doing this the boiling point goes up. When the boiling point reaches 105C then the water content is sufficiently reduced for the jam to set. So ideally you need a cooking thermometer which can show you when the liquid has reached 105 degrees. It is a lot simpler than the whole putting a drop of jam on a cold saucer, seeing if it skins over type of approach of yore. By using a thermometer you can simmer the mixture until it reaches temperature, take it off the heat and pot it with confidence.