Let's Talk About Jam

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

For a long time in Russia, jam was made mainly from fruits and berries, because it is they that give us the opportunity to remember the hot summer in cold winter, enjoy the bright taste, feel the aroma of the gifts of nature! Our ancestors knew about the beneficial properties of vegetables, but there was no sugar, and people made jam using honey. For example, Ivan the Terrible was very fond of honey-drenched cucumber jam

Nowadays, many people prepare jam not only from traditional ingredients. Sophisticated people say that vegetable jam is no worse than traditional berries and fruits. Jam can consist only of vegetables, or of fruits, but with the addition of vegetables, or from some unusual and seemingly completely incompatible components.

By the way, carrot jam, and even with the addition of fruits, is much healthier than just the usual one made from berries or fruits. The basis of any jam is the vitamin component of the ingredients. So when boiling carrots, the amount of easily digestible antioxidants increases to 30%. Also, after heat treatment, the cell walls of vegetables become soft, which contributes to a more complete assimilation of the nutrients contained in the product, as well as fiber. This is primarily very important for people suffering from diseases of the digestive tract.

Take watermelon as an example. After cooking, the lycopene contained in it, a substance that gives a red color, is absorbed several times faster. By the way, it is lycopene that has a pronounced antioxidant effect. This property is indispensable for the prevention of cancer. All of the above is also true for tomatoes.

But in beets, all the nutrients are completely preserved. Beetroot has properties such as lowering blood pressure, normalizing the digestive system, it has a beneficial effect on human blood.

Zucchini jam. If you add a little citric acid or cherry plum, for example, then the zucchini takes on the taste of pineapple.

Delicious young pine cones jam. They are still green and therefore not tough. This dish has a strong smell of eaten, but in winter it is also a cough medicine.

It's no secret that sweet food, in particular, jam, improves mood and, thanks to the glucose content, nourishes the brain.

The types of jam are not only varied in composition, but also largely differ in the method of preparation. This includes such types as peltya, cue, bekmes, doshab.

Pelty is made from juices or juice mixtures of several types of berries. This type of jam is very common among the Baltic peoples. The cue is made with the addition of equal parts of sugar and berries, or vegetables in a weight ratio. Sometimes the ingredients make up only a quarter of the weight, and the rest is sugar. This jam is preferred by the inhabitants of Central Asia. Bekmes, doshab is a jam cooked over low heat to the consistency of honey. The peoples of the Caucasus love to cook this kind of jam.

There are also options for the so-called "dry" jam. For example, candied fruits or the well-known marshmallow.

There are several simple, but at the same time very effective rules for minimizing the loss of nutrients:

1. Vegetables should be boiled immediately after harvesting and cleaning. If this does not work, then after cleaning they should be poured with plain cold water.

2. The boil should be very low, the best is to steam the vegetables.

In the end, I would like to present to your attention the original recipe for onion jam:

Take: 6-7 onions, 2.5 cups brown sugar, half a glass of white wine vinegar (or half white wine and vinegar 5%), vegetable oil for frying onions.

Peel the onion and cut into half rings, then fry until golden brown and add sugar. First, the sugar melts, then it boils. Cook it all until caramel, stirring constantly. After that, pour the vinegar and keep on the fire for another 15 minutes. As soon as the jam has cooled, put it in jars and close.

And one more little tip - don't be afraid to experiment. To begin with, you can weld one small jar of the same type for a sample. And after a while, you will have more than one version of proven recipes that you are not ashamed to boast of in front of your guests, offering them several types of unusual jam to try.