The lemon saga continues! I’ve managed to reduce my lemon supply to less than a hundred. This morning I got up and slice diced and juiced four more to attempt to make a lemon jam recipe. After dicing and juicing the lemons I boiled in water and drained twice to remove the bitter taste present in the pith. I’m not sure how the recipe wanted one to remove the water but neither method I tried was particularly successful. Using a fine seive trapped the zest but didn’t offer an easy way to get the zest from the seive back into the pan. Straining with the pan lid lost significant amounts of zest.
After the double pre-boiling, additional water and sugar are added to the lemon bits to make the jam. The trickiest part of this recipe is the same as ALL jam recipes, getting the mixture to set. I have a tendency to trust the timing in the recipe and as a result most of the time my jam tends to not set. Houston is extra humid and the extra moisture seems to mess with the overall cook time increasing it. I’m typically worried about OVER cooking that I follow the recipe when I should get out the candy thermometer to test temperature to ensure it set.
This batch ended up being MEGA runny. Sad faces and curse words. Luckily I have LOTS more lemons to make another attempt with. I might use this batch to make some oat jammy bars or sweeten tea as it is more of a syrup.