I have been experimenting gooseberry jam making for couple of years. Tried some online recipes but none have met my expectations. I thought gooseberry is a fruit that is on top of making the jam , at least what is/ was in England. English adores gooseberry jam. The gooseberry jam I made following Martha Stewart’ recipe, or other high rated online recipes, none had any exceptional quality that deserved much raving about besides overloaded with sugar. Also gooseberry supposedly has high pectin content that can make jam without adding pectin to set. but after adding a lot of sugar, I still have hard time to get it to set correctly(old fashion plate in refrigerator test)
If anyone has good recipe to share. I am willing to try another batch.
This is the gooseberry jam I made recently. I used 4cups of unripe fruits to add a little more tart. It seems tasted more balanced than jam made with fully ripened fruits.
BTW if anyone has a faster way to remove that little thing hanging on the blossom end, I love to hear the method. It takes a lot of time just to remove that from each individual berries.
@IL847, I don’t have a recipe, but was going to start searching through my old old cookbooks as my gooseberries are ripening now too. I figured some of the pioneer type ladies that settled out here probably made a lot of gooseberry jam or jelly. I will let you know if I find anything interesting.
I was wondering how gooseberry would be blended with other fruits. Right now we also have blackberries ripening. The chokecherries should be close as well, but they may have gotten froze out along with all the other tree fruits. I haven’t seen any hanging from the trees nearby so I will have to search further abroad.
As far as removing the tail, I was just going to juice them in my steam juicer (and make jelly, rather than jam). Should be faster anyway! If you ran the solids through a food mill, I am not sure if it would be able to remove the stem and tail but press the pulp on through.
Looks under cooked. Too much sugar takes away the tartness of the berry. I would follow a blackcurrant recipe with less sugar, as black currants are very musky and sour.
If found something interesting please share. Good suggestionof mix with other berries. I have red currants and black currants ripening too. I love the aroma of black currants. Maybe I can experiment combining gooseberry and black currants together to make mixed berry jam.
Right, sugar’s sweetness overpowers other flavors and makes all the fruit/berry jam taste lack of distinct characters. Also I am trying to control weight and eat very little high sugar/butter concentrated stuff like jam or desserts (not I am overweighted, just don’t want to grow into that direction). I will try black currants recipe (I was going to dry them to make black currants tea), maybe I can add enough pectin to reduce sugar to make the jam set
Looking at cookbooks, I found recipes for gooseberry ketchup, gooseberry pie, gooseberry jam, gooseberry butter, gooseberry sauce, and even gooseberry ice. Any of these sound interesting?
Wow, yes all sounds very interesting. It is summer, i am wondering how to make gooseberry ice?
From The Farmer’s Wife Guide to Fabulous Fruits and Berries:
Gooseberry Sauce, cook gooseberries in a saucepan or kettle in the following proportions: for every 2 cups of gooseberries, add 1cup of water and 1/2 to 1 cup sugar. Simmer until gooseberries are tender. Refrigerate or freeze in cooking liquid. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.
Gooseberry Ice, using drained gooseberry sauce , puree the gooseberries to make 3 cups. Add 1 1/2 cups pineapple with its own juice and 1 1/3 cups sugar. Puree well. Pour the mixture into your ice-cream maker and follow manufacturers instructions.
You may want to strain out seeds before adding other ingredients.
I thought the recipe for gooseberry ketchup was interesting. Really it is a relish. Farm Journal.
2 qts ripe gooseberries
2 qts green gooseberries
2 C. sugar
2 C. vinegar
1 tblsp cloves
1 tblsp cinnamon
1 tblsp allspice
Mix all ingredients together. Bring to a boil and simmer until thick. Put through medium coarse sieve. If not thick enough, simmer until desired consistency. Seal at once in hot sterilized jars. Makes 4 half pints
Anne, Thanks for the recipes . Indeed the Gooseberry ketchup sounded interesting, it should be good with BBQ too. Since the gooseberry has sweet and tart flavor, maybe, can be made into good gooseberry salad dressing
Black currants need NO pectin! They are a perfect fruit, for conserves, sauces, sorbet, and jam!
I found a good looking recipe in Ellie Topp’s “Preserving Made Easy”.
It is Gooseberry Rhubarb Jam. My gooseberries are native wild ones that turn dark purple/black when ripe. They aren’t super tart or overly flavorful. They are good, they just don’t have a unique taste. I think they would combine well with tart rhubarb. I don’t have black currants, only red and pink. Mine are all done and harvest of them was small anyway. I ate them as I would pick them each day. I would think the red ones would have made a nice mix with my gooseberries. Something to keep in mind if I ever get more than a 1/2 cup from them.
This calls for 5 1/2 cups sugar. That’s way to sweet for me. I might start with only one cup, but realizing that when you reduce the sugar in a canning recipe, you might not get the correct set you are looking for. If you used a high pectin fruit as MrsG suggests, you might be able to reduce the sugar and still get a respectable set to your jam.
Gooseberry Rhubarb Jam recipe:
2 cups finely chopped rhubarb
1/2 cup water
2 cups gooseberries, stems and tails removed, coarsely chopped.
2 Tbs lemon juice
5 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 pouch liquid pectin
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Place rhubarb and water in a very large stainless steel or enamel saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat, cover and boil gently for 3 minutes.
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Stir in gooseberries, lemon juice and sugar into rhubarb. Return to a full boil over high heat and boil hard for 1 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in the liquid pectin.
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Ladle into hot jars, place caps and rings on, and process for 10 min (at sea level) in a boiling water bath canner. See NCHFP for BWB canning instructions.
Makes 5 cups.
I would vote for adding more pectin to reduce the sugar. Increasing pectin is increasing carb which I can live with. I can always balance the carb intake by reducing bread or gains intake, not a big problem. Plus, pectin is something good to the health
One of my Farm Journal cookbooks suggests combining gooseberries and mulberries in a berry pie.
Anne, I like mulberry fresh or infused in liquor. Cooked mulberry has strange smells.
It will be a long time before I have enough mulberries to do more than taste them once in a while.
My IE is ripening, I pick some everyday. but I have couple of Robin nesting on my mulberry tree. I told the couple that I can lend them my tree but I don’t share mulberries. If they pick my mulberries I will turn their nest upside down.I think so far we are kinda keeping the agreement But this can change anyday I expect
I’d suggest ditching the recipes and using some rules of thumb and your taste buds to tell you when you’ve got the sugar right. From this great article use between 40 and 70% sugar by weight of all parts of the fruit going in to the jam. 40% is for high pectin, high acid fruits (gooseberries, grapes) and 70% for low acid, low pectin fruits (strawberries). Many fruits will require you add some acid (a little lemon juice is usually right), and it will taste “right” when you’ve added enough. Since gooseberries already have a lot of acid, you can start at the low end of sugar and add until it tastes “right”. For many kinds of fruit, it’s also helpful to include a percentage of underripe fruits for their higher acid and pecting contents. Following these strategies, I no longer add any pectin when I make jams. There are very few fruits that require it.
As for preserving the flavor, the key is cooking it hard and quickly to evaporate the water. The longer it simmers, the more flavor you lose to the atmosphere.
The big honking caveat I have to make here is that while I’ve made jam from quite a number of things, I haven’t done gooseberries yet. I just planted my first one this year, so I expect I’m at least a couple years out from that.
Good suggestions, I like this flexible approach. I need to understand the relationship and functions of sugar , pectin, and acid in preserves a bit more in order to start experimenting.
@IL847, Do you have Linda Ziedrich’s book, The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and other Sweet Preserves? I highly suggest it if you do not already have it. Ziedrich is very experienced and understands the science and the art of food preservation. She goes into quite a bit of detail on the intricate relationship between pectin, acid, water, and sugar in pages 6-20. There is really too much information for me to include here. Your local library may carry her book.
I usually reread a lot of this information every year before I start to can. Like @jcguarneri, I have been trying to make most of my jams without any added pectin. It doesn’t always work out perfectly, but I don’t mind a soft-set jam, I actually kind of prefer that. It spreads easier!