12 days ago we harvested 2 gallons of seedless kumquats. I gave 2 quarts to my neighbor who has since made some French kumquat jam.
The marmalade I made last year was too chunky so I took a different approach this time.
- 2 quarts at a time, I put the kumquats into a Ninja food processor. I put the power setting on Medium and held down the Pulse button for about 5 seconds - or at least until big pieces stopped whizzing by. Sometimes I had to push it again for another second. The result was diced kumquats about the size of store bought pickle relish plus liquid. I dumped the batches one by one into a large standing bowl.
- When I was done dicing, I got out the OXO food mill and inserted the medium screen. I put 2 cups of the kumquat slush at a time into the food mill to strain it. After pressing out the liquid (and a little bit of the fruit) I then held the food mill over an 8 cup pyrex pitcher and ran the food mill backwards while holding it at an angle. This caused the strained kumquat pieces to fall into the pitcher.
- In the leftover liquid there was maybe a cup of slush so I repeated the above step using the fine mesh screen. That took very little time. Altogether I now had just over 8 cups of strained kumquat relish and 2 cups of kumquat juice. I covered them both and set them in the refrigerator. I needed a rest!
- Two days later I followed traditional jam making procedures using the relish, granulated sugar, and Ball Low-Sugar pectin. I knew my pressure cooker could only handle 7 1/2 pint jars so I made two batches.
- Upon heating 4 cups of relish in a stovetop pot, I saw there was not enough liquid. Now I had purposely strained out the sour kumquat juice so I added filtered water from the refrigerator tap ā using 3/4 cup to supplement what I observed in the pot. Once the contents were simmering I added 1 cup of granulated sugar all at once and spent sometime stirring it in. Then I let it simmer for a few minutes (Iām an impatient cook). Then I started adding the pectin powder 1 Tbsp at a time, but sprinkling the pectin over the surface and spending about a minute stirring it in and making sure no lumps remained. Then like before I waited before adding the next, using 4 Tbsp total.
- I then ladled the mixture into 1/2 pint jars and after screwing the lids on tight, placed them in the pressure cooker. This unit has a 1" stand to use with jars. I then added enough water to the pot interior to bring the level up about 1/3 from the bottom of the jars. This is a high-temperature pot and kumquat is acidic so I set the pressure-cook time for 10 minutes.
