Jam from young pine cones
Ingredients
Pine cones – 1 kgSugar – 1.5 kg
Water – 1 l
Check out the recipe
Step by step recipe with photo
Young pine cones jam – before I had only heard of it, and it seemed to me that only very special grandmothers could make it, for whom a special ancient recipe for this delicacy was passed down from generation to generation.Last year on vacation we bought a jar of such jam, and the hostess told us the recipe. And for more than half a year I have been waiting for this special period, when on young pine shoots appear those very useful, small, green and milky cones. I waited! And when I saw that cones appeared on the pines in our park, I gathered my friends and we went out of town on weekends to the woods – to collect cones.
Frankly speaking, it turned out to be a very difficult task. It is one thing in the park, where young pines are planted, which grow flat, and you can reach them even from my height. It is quite another thing to have a pine forest that has been growing there for probably more than a century, and the height of those trees is very imposing. But, the desire was very strong, so it was impossible to stop me. We both jumped, and came up with stick-reach…
Anyway, after a few magical hours, our pine boxes were filled with young, juicy, resinous cones. All our clothes and hair were covered with pine pollen, but everyone was very happy, especially the kids who were watching the bouncing moms. Harvested – go to the stove to make jam!
1. Here is our harvest. The cones are very fragrant, smooth and juicy. Ideally, we should sort through them and throw away the ugly ones, but I just didn’t have any, every cone is a treasure.
2. Rinse the cones under cold running water to wash away the pollen.
3. Put the cones in the pot in which we are going to cook our jam.
4. Pour purified drinking water and put on the fire. Bring to a boil, turn off the fire and leave the cones for 12-15 hours. It is very convenient to do this in the evening to continue cooking in the morning.
5. This is how the cones became in the morning. They are slightly swollen and no longer bright green, but a slightly swampy color.
6. Now you should drain the infused water from them – measure the volume of liquid.
7. I got exactly one liter of liquid. On this basis, we take one and a half times as much sugar.
8. Pour back the water and put the sugar.
9. Place on the fire and bring to a boil so that the sugar dissolves. Set aside to let the jam cool down and soak in the sugar syrup. You can boil the jam for hours, but I prefer a slightly different way: bring it to a boil and set aside, and so on – for several days. I boiled it for a total of three days. I brought the jam to a boil in the morning and in the evening.
10. For the last time, you need to strain the rose-colored kissel into a separate container and put it on the fire to boil.
11. separately lay out the cones.
12. we take sterilized jars.
13. Distribute the whole and even cones in the jars. The cones take up about a third of the jar.
14. Once the syrup comes to a boil, it can be poured into jars.
15. I got about two liters of finished jam. I hoped that there would be a little more, so one jar remained only with cones. I distributed them among the filled jars.
16. Here we are ready for the jam-adventure. Now we will enjoy fragrant and delicious jam from young pine cones in winter.
17. Hurry up, cone season won’t be long at all – literally until the end of June!