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How to make jam with Andrew Gravett
Transcript
00:00Hello my name is Andrew Gravett, I'm the pastry chef at the Langham Hotel
00:03and we're going to make our apricot and vanilla jam.
00:10Start off with, we've got water and glucose in the pan, we're just going to add some sugar
00:18and then we're just going to add vanilla pod. We've scraped the seeds out, you tend to find
00:22anyway that there's more flavour in the pod and this is going to cook, this syrup is going to cook
00:26to 135 degrees and while that's cooking we're going to prepare the apricots. So the apricots,
00:34we've just halved them and taken the stones out and we're just going to put them through a
00:38vegetable cutter, a grater on a food processor. If you don't have one of these you can just run
00:43them through a normal grater on the biggest cutter and the reason why we're going to grate
00:48these or cut or slice these is that we want them to be small in size so that when we add to the
00:53sugar syrup they will absorb the sugar very quickly, they'll release their water quickly
00:57and in theory around 5-10 minutes the jam should be cooked, giving us a jam that's full of flavour,
01:04the colour should be vibrant orange in this case. So we're going to put these apricots
01:08in the food processor with the grater cutter to make those fine filaments of apricot.
01:23So there the apricots are grinded down to the filament and ready to add to the syrup when it's
01:30got to its 135. So now the syrup has reached 135 degrees we're going to add in the chopped apricots,
01:40just being careful as it might splash a little as we add them. So now what will happen is as it cooks
01:47the apricots are going to release their water, that's going to evaporate. As it's cooking you're
01:52going to find that there's going to be a scum that will come up on top of the apricots and this
01:57we're just going to use a ladle to take this off. We want to cook this as quickly as possible so
02:01that the heat from the electric stove or from the gas is as full on as possible, the quicker that
02:06you cook this the fresher flavour the jam should have. You can see there there's just a foam coming
02:13on top of the jam, we're going to try and remove that without taking too much of the apricots out.
02:17So now the jam has just reached 105 degrees we're going to add the pectin inside, I'm going to give
02:23it a quick boil just to finish cooking the pectin off. This is an apple-based pectin just mixed with
02:30a bit of water and sugar that we've just quickly heated in the microwave, it needs just a little
02:34boil in the jam and it's ready. And also when it comes to the acid, different fruit will need
02:39different quantities of acid for the pectin to set and in the case of the apricot it's a fruit
02:43for the pectin to set and in the case of the apricot it's a fruit that has a medium amount
02:48of its own pectin and it needs a certain amount of acid to set it and you'll find that with
02:52different fruit you'll have different sets so for different fruits you'll need to have different
02:56amounts of acid. So there the pectin's cooked, I've turned the heat off and I'm just going to add the
03:01acid to finish it, mix it in and then the jam is ready to put into the jars. So now we're going to
03:07put the jam into a jar, if you're planning to keep these jams for a long time it's important to heat
03:12the jar in an oven, in a dry oven around 100 degrees just to kill any bacteria. Put your jam
03:17in the jar as hot as possible so ideally as soon as it's been made to go directly in the jar.
03:22And here you need to leave about 10% of air in the jar and there's your jam ready to serve.