How to make plum jam

One old way of preserving fruit is by making jam. This type of jam, however, gets characteristically less sugar added to it. While you are adding less sugar, by cooking it you will gain a mass with less water, and thus with higher concentration of sugar already found in fruit.
It is quite simple to make, although depending on the fruit it could take a while and require lots of stirring. Different recipes will vary somewhat depending on fruit so you might want to find a specific recipe. Here we will use plums as an example. You can vary the amounts to your taste or need. Some people, due to health problems or diet restrictions, don’t put any sugar into jam, instead they depend on fruit alone for taste or add sweeteners.

To make plum jam you will need:
- Ten pounds of plums. It is very important that the plums, or any other fruit you use is ripe. If it is not then your jam won’t be as sweet without adding a lot more sugar to it, it might not have the right texture either.
- Two pounds of sugar. As this varies greatly by taste you should start with one pound and then go from there. So have a few more pounds ready on hand just in case. 
- A large and wide pot. Wider and lower pots are desirable due to the ease of stirring over the deep pots.
- A clean or new wooden spoon for stirring.
- A small ladle. The ladle doesn't need to be tiny just comfortable enough a size for you to be able to pour into the jars quickly and without much worry of spilling over.
- Clean jars. For the above amounts a safe number of jars is about ten average sized jars. The amount you will need will vary largely on how thick or runny you make your jam.
- Several clean kitchen towels.
- A stove with an oven.

How to make the plum jam: 
- First you will need to prepare the fruit by washing it thoroughly and pitting it.
- After the fruit has been cleaned put it into the large pot you chose and basically cook it until it starts to fall apart and get mushy. Make sure you stir the jam constantly or it will burn.
- Add a pound of sugar, stirring it in well. 
- After a few more minutes of cooking carefully take out a spoonful of jam. Let it cool on the side so you can taste it to see if more sugar is needed.
- Keep cooking and stirring the Jam until the bottom of the pot becomes visible.
- Towards the end take out your jars, put them on low temperature into the oven. They need to be hot when you put jam into them.
- Once the jam is done use a ladle to carefully pour the jam into the hot jars.
- Make sure there are no big air bubbles in the jam (get rid of them with a thin straw).
- Put the jars, uncovered, back into the oven, turn it off and let the jam sit at least 24 hours in a closed, turned off oven. Leaving it in the oven will create a thin crust that will help prevent it from spoiling.
- Once cooled completely cover the jars and store them in a cool dry place until giving away.

Photo Credits: Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository

Natural homemade fruit jelly: Raspberry jelly

What you will need to make natural homemade raspberry jelly:
- 4 kg of raspberries.
- Sugar, amount depends on the amount of juice you get from the raspberries.
- A strainer, make sure it is not metal.

How to make natural homemade Raspberry jelly:
-First cook all four kg of the raspberries, without any water, for about eight minutes. 
- Keep stirring so it doesn't start to burn or stick to the bottom.
- After eight minutes put it into a fine strainer and let the juice drain into a bowl.
- When its all drained weigh the juice and add the same amount of sugar.
- Put the mixture into a pan and cook on low heat while stirring occasionally.
- When it comes to a boil stop stirring and just take the foam off the top while cooking for another 3 minutes.
- While still warm pour the jelly into cleaned dry jars, do not close them until it is completely cooled off.

Before following any of the natural homemade jelly recipes make sure you read the following post which acts as a quick intro to natural jelly making:
Natural homemade fruit jelly: the intro to jelly making 

Natural homemade fruit jelly: Mint jelly

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What you will need to make natural homemade mint jelly:
- 1/4 kg mint leaves
- 1 kg of sugar
- 1 apple
- 4 dl of water
- A strainer, make sure it is not metal

How to make natural homemade Mint jelly:
- Clean the mint leaves with a damp cloth and remove the stems
- Peel, and dice the apple.
- Heat up the mint leaves with the 4 dl of water
- Add the sugar and the diced apple to the cooking mint leaves
- Once it has been brought to a boiling point turn the heat down and keep cooking until the mass stiffens
- Strain the mass and store in well cleaned and completely dry glass jars.

Before following any of the natural homemade Jelly recipes make sure you read the following post which acts as a quick intro to natural jelly making:

Natural homemade fruit jelly: the intro to jelly making

Natural homemade fruit jelly: the intro to jelly making

Jelly should be firm, see through, and should retain the color and fragrance of the fruit. 
It is prepared with fruit juice, and you should only use fruit which has enough acidity and pectin (essentially the thing that makes it turn into jelly). I realize that nowadays you can buy all sorts of additives and pectin that will act as firming agents but this is meant for natural jellies without those. 
The fruits that contain pectin are sour apples, nearly ripe raspberries and grapes and they are the easiest ones to make jelly with, you can mix them with other fruits too.
It is generally good to add some lemon juice to any fruit when making jelly because of its acidic properties.
If you want your jelly to look really nice don't peel your fruit or take out the core because they contain the most pectin.
Instead wash the fruit and cook it either whole or just cut up, with just enough water to cover it.

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Cook it on high heat so it would get soft, but be careful not to have it fall apart. 
You should line your strainer with two layers of gauze and leave the fruit in it to drain on its own. Do not press it just let it sit there for a few hours and do its thing.
The juice drained from the fruit should be weight and then added the same amount of sugar, then cooked on low heat. 
In general the jelly is done if you put a drop of it on a plate and it hardens straight away.

There is also raw jelly which can be attained from cherries and from red and black currants.
The fruit should be washed and seeds removed then the juice pressed out. 
The juice should then be warmed up, but not to the boiling point. 
once warmed up turn the heat off an add the same weight in sugar to it. 
Keep stirring it well until the whole thing starts to cool and harden. 
The raw jelly should be done in small quantities.