I lived in my house for 5 whole years before realizing the tree dropping all of the pesky purple fruit was a mulberry tree and that mulberries were actually quite tasty. I now make a habit of popping a few ripe ones off the tree each time I spin around the tree on the mower.
Picking mulberries by hand is a huge pain in the you know what. Our neighbor recommended laying a sheet out on the ground and shaking the tree. That is what we did and the those dark purple beauties just popped off the tree…along with a lot of other tree crud.
Needless to say, when you are entering into the world of mulberries, you are signing yourself up for some work. I tried to shortcut some of the work and well, this jam ended up on Test Kitchen Tuesday rather than just a regular, ole, you should totally make this jam post.
Mulberry Jam
8 cups mulberries, cleaned of all their tree crud
2 cups granulated sugar
9 tablespoons lemon juice
12 tablespoons pectin
I mixed together the mulberries and sugar and allowed them to macerate overnight. Upon further reading, when using powdered pectin, you should also mix in the pectin during this step.
The next day, over medium heat, mix together berries, lemon juice and pectin. I cooked it until the pectin had set and the jam was very thick, about 20 minutes. This jam was very very thick. There was way too much pectin in this recipe. Also upon further reading, most people only use about half of the amount suggested on the bottle.
Also, it would have probably benefitted the fruit to have been run through a sieve. The jam ended up being large chunks of the whole fruit, complete with seeds and stems (that I failed to pluck off). Taste wise, this jam is really quite good. The lemon juice really brightens up the otherwise one dimensional flavor of the berries.
Hopefully, there is enough berries on my bush to try this again.
