Plum Jam Without Water: Homemade Recipe for Winter

Step-by-step recipe

1. For us, plum jam is a traditional sweet dessert, a treat and a filling for all kinds of baking, a cake ingredient and a lovely sauce for syrniki. We usually wait until ripe plums without any astringency show up in the stores. From then on, we start pickling them and making jam.
   
2. Blue plums always have a whitish bloom that washes off easily. But even if a little remains, that's fine. I remember as kids we didn't bother much with washing fruit, and we're still alive. As a rule, the pit comes out easily. For convenience, cut each plum with a knife and then remove the pit. You should end up with two separate halves.
   
3. It's best to cook plum jam in a ceramic or enameled pot; there's no need for the fruit to touch metal more than necessary. Put the plum halves in the pot and cover with sugar. The eternal question and bone of contention: how much sugar to add and whether to add water. For good jam we use white granulated sugar at half the weight of the pitted plums.
   
4. We don't add any water at all; it's unnecessary. Ripe plums dissolve the sugar beautifully, if only partly at first. But as they heat, the halves release juice, and the sugar dissolves in minutes. What's more, without extra water you get plum jam of “classic” thickness, with clearly visible pieces of fruit.
   
5. After adding the sugar, gently stir with a wooden spatula, or just shake the pot to spread the sugar. Cover with a lid or an upside-down plate and leave for 4-6 hours for the plums to release juice and the sugar to start dissolving. Stir now and then; once an hour is enough.
   
6. Then put the pot on the heat and warm it up. The sugar will dissolve completely very quickly, and there will be plenty of liquid in the pot. It may seem like too much liquid; don't worry. Once it cools, a spoon will stand up in the plum jam.
   
7. Bring the plum jam just to a boil and take it off the heat. At this stage the liquid usually foams a lot and turns pale pink. It's often said the foam should be skimmed off. Don't bother. As it cools, all the foam will blend back into the jam and disappear. Cover and leave for 6-8 hours.
   
8. As it cools, the plum pieces soak up the syrup and release some of their moisture into it. The syrup turns deep purple and incredibly fragrant. Once cool, the jam becomes very thick, which you can clearly feel when you stir it.
   
9. Get the jars and lids ready: wash them and sterilize them any way you can. Put the pot back on the heat and bring to a boil. Once it's clearly boiling, turn the heat down. A small cup is handy for filling the jars with plum jam. Try not to fill them to the very brim; leave about 5 mm.
   
10. Seal each jar with its lid right away and stand it upside down on the table. After 3-4 minutes, once you're sure the jar is airtight, turn it right side up. If you like, wrap the jars in a blanket, though it isn't necessary. Once completely cool, the jars of jam can be stored in the pantry.
    
11. Open a new jar of plum jam as needed, but after that it's best kept in the cold. By the way, in all these years I've never seen this jam crystallize. Then again, it rarely lasts until spring; it just gets eaten sooner.