Food & Wine Report: Making Fruit Preserves

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS)— When you have all of summer's fruits in season and at your disposal, it's so easy to make fruit preserves.

From apricots to plums, pluots to peaches and even cherries, it really doesn't matter because you can mix and match them.

But there are some simple things that you should remember; things like apricots and peaches virtually have no pectin so it takes a longer time to cook, so you can boil it down so it's firm enough. You probably want to add a little bit of pectin, which you can buy by the package. Pectin is simply an element that is extracted from things like apple peelings orange peel, which happen to be loaded with pectin.

Plums on the other hand have an inordinately high amount of pectin. I've been trying to incorporate them in my mixed fruit jams to avoid having to buy extra pectin at the store.

KCBS Food & Wine Report:

Even though the old ditty says, "a cup to a cup" I actually never use more than ¾ cup of sugar to 1 cup of fruit. Most of my preserves only have about a half cup of sugar. The preserves will thicken as it cools. Even though you may have tested some with a little dish in the freezer, that never is an exact gauge of its consistency.

If it seems just a little runnier than you like when you bottle it, it's probably going to come out alright. If it's a little too stiff, here's a tip: add a teaspoon of white wine or a teaspoon of water into each jar and stir it in when you eat it. That should make for the perfect texture.

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