The jams of June 🆙

In June, the warm season begins in earnest, the summer, full of tasty and nutritious summer fruit.

But what is the ideal juniper fruit to prepare some seasonal jams?

Even if we were ignorant of seasonality it will be enough to go to the market to take a look and realize it, and even if we did not have a trusted greengrocer, just type "June fruit" online to see an endless list of sites ready to tell us everything about the fruit we find in this month.

In the summer, many plants bear fruit, in a botanical sense, such as tomatoes, courgettes, aubergines, etc., however, since our article focuses on the jams of the month of June, we will focus on fruit so defined in a commercial sense.

So what are the fruits at the center of attention in June?

We still have the delicious apricots and juicy peaches, while we can still find kiwis, as in almost all year round, strawberries, cherries and medlars from Japan.

After a certain altitude we can find the very tasty but increasingly rare wild strawberries.

Wild strawberry jam

Le wild strawberries are a special fruit, very rich in flavor and fragrance (etymologically the terms fragrance and strawberry have a common root).

The wild strawberry is once ripe particularly soft and not easy to work, especially when it comes to cleaning and washing.

The ideal is to rinse it with a shower head and let them dry in the sun or, better yet, use a dryer with the same purpose. Once the strawberries have been cleaned we are already halfway through the work.

Ingredients

For each kg of fruit we will use:

> juice of 1 lemon;
> 800 g of sugar;
> 100 g of honey from sulla.

Preparation

We put everything together and let it macerate for one night in the fridge. The following day the product can be put to cook over low heat: you will see that in a short time everything will reach the ideal consistency.

Medlar of Japan

In June it happens to see bushy plants in the gardens and along the paths, used for ornamental purposes, of Japanese medlar, semi-abandoned, with all the fruits on the ground or at the mercy of birds and squirrels. Such a pity.

In June they are fully ripe, it is a tasty, thirst-quenching fruit, with very few calories.

In addition to the classic medlar, a sort of medlar-based limoncello, with this fruit you can make good jams, especially to fill sweets.

Ingredients

For every kg of Japanese medlar, net of peel and seeds, we will add:

> 800 g of sugar;
> 2 apples to provide more gelation;
> juice of 1 lemon;
> grated peel of 1/2 lemon.

Preparation

We will put the medlar and apples in the pot, cut into small pieces, and then add, on low flame, sugar and lemon. During the half hour necessary for cooking we will be careful to turn slowly but constantly until a homogeneous product is obtained.

How to sterilize the jars

What to do with jams once they are ready? Although hot jam is a unique treat, the purpose of making jams is to store for the winter or for the months when the fruit in question is no longer in season.

To do this we need glass jars and it is very important that these are sterilized in a workmanlike manner, both jars and caps. The two most classic methods, for those who do not have a sterilizing machine are the boiling of the jars in water and the oven. Boiling can be done in a pressure cooker to save time.

The oven can also be used, placing the jars at high temperatures for 10 minutes. A variant is the microwave: fill the jars with water, put them in the microwave for 4 minutes, remove everything.

If you think that caps or lids are afraid of temperatures that are too high and could be damaged use grapefruit essential oil to disinfect them.