Blackberry (Rubus fruticosus) jelly is an incredible taste sensation. Smeared liberally on hot toast with lashings of butter, the flavour is sinfully delicious. This blackberry jelly recipe is a doddle to make.
Step 1
Pick 4lb of blackberries. This should take less than 20 minutes if you do it with a friend or family, and find a bumper crop.
Step 2
Wash and drain the fruit.
Step 3
Take out your preserving pan (an essential piece of kitchen equipment, especially if you’re going to be preparing wild preserves on a regular basis). Put the blackberries into it.
Step 4
Add the juice of 2 lemons, 1/2 pint of water.
Step 5
Now simmer your blackberry jelly mash for 1 hour.
Step 6
Grab your jelly bag straining contraption, and strain the blackberries until they stop dripping.
Step 6b
Towards the end of the juice straining, sterilise some jars by washing in hot soapy water, rinse, then put in an oven at 175F, and leave for 25 minutes.
Step 7
For every 1 pint of juice you extract, measure out 1lb of sugar.
Step 8
Add the sugar to the blackberry juice, and heat the juice on low, stirring all the time until the sugar has dissolved.
Step 9
Then simmer for 1 hour, until the liquid has reached “setting point”. Setting point is when you can put a little bit of the juice on a plate. Now push your finger through the juice. If the juice doesn’t automatically fall back into itself, and stays at the point you pushed it to, then it’s ready to bottle. IMPORTANT: Make sure you don’t over simmer the juice as you might end up with toffee!
Step 10
Pour your blackberry jelly juice into your hot sterilised jars.
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Sounds wonderful – how long will it last before it goes off please? Also, is it best to store in the fridge?
thank you
I’ve had some in the cupboard for over a year and it’s fine. I suppose once open it you might want to put it in the fridge, but in our household, the stuff gets wolfed down in no time. So it barely lasts a week or two with greedy fingers clawing all over the place.
Once opened and put in the fridge it should last a few months if you don’t touch it. It all depends on how “clean” a glutton you are
And whether you cross pollinate the jelly with bread crumbs, butter and other perambulatory foodstuffs.
I hve just succesfully made my first preserve ever thanks to this site – any, it was a Doddle! The instructions are superb and everything came out Hunky Dory
. I had just less the required amount of berries, so I put in a cpuole of chopped russet apples from the garden to bulk out. It worked a treat.
Next up I’m trying the white dead nettle – I have loads in my wild patch. I don’t know what that liquid is to dress it so am going to use a mixture of fresh lemon and lime & top it with nasturtium flowers.
Then I’ll have a go @ the blackberry vinegar too.
Many thanks.
Richie
Please excuse the appaling spelling, my eyes are killing me.
Re. storing jam in the fridge…
Jam freezes perfectly – all this fetishistic jar-sterilising is pointless!
Make as many jars as you have blackberry juice or fruit pulp for; keep one jar in the fridge for immediate needs; freeze the rest and defrost as you need them. Voila – no mould!
My daughter and i walked across the street from our house and found blackberries everywhere best year yet here in Ocean Springs Mississippi. What a way to spend time with my daughter making our own jelly. Great recipe thanks jerry gardner and jenna gardner
How much jelly does this recipe make, how many, and what size jars will I need.
Thanks in advance
E.J.
Standard jam jars are used and the amount in the recipe makes about 4 jars worth.
Wow, simmering for an hour seems quite excessive. I rarely have to simmer my jam for more than 20 minutes, still I’ll give it a go this year and see what happens.
Different horses for different courses, (as they say in France)
Instead of all of the simmering and straining, I just use an old-fashioned Foley food mill. I rinse the berries, pulp them in the mill, discard the seeds and waste, and stick the juice in the fridge until I’m ready to make a batch. One quart of fresh juice makes 8 half-pints of what I call, “Almost Seedless Blackberry Jam.”
I’ll actually use a small strainer to fish out more miscellaneous seeds while I’m heating the juice/sugar mixture to boiling, but I’m not that obsessive about it.
This is a great way to use the “tame” berries that tend to be very large and have extremely large seeds.
Has anyone accidently turned it into toffee? I wonder what it would taste like? Blackberry toffee does sound nice.
I have been freezing blackberries as soon as I have picked and washed them, as they are ripening in small amounts here at the moment.
Is it ok to use blackberries that have been frozen to make this jelly?
Thanks!
Kate: I cannot see why not… experiment.
Yes it’s fine to use frozen blackberries – i made some jam recently with some fresh, and some frozen and it came out a treat.
Just made some using all frozen berries – would anyone know – would this account for the large amount of scum during the last simmering – or is this usual ….if not anyone got any bright ideas ?
I tried the knob of butter (which has worked with other preserves) but unfortunately not this time – thanks
Just made two large Milner jars of bramble jelly, turned out perfectly, thank you. Great recipe, so easy!
how can i adapt this for my breadmaker (morphy richards) 3in1. love jelly with no pips. there doesn’t seem to be an opportunity to strain??
wahey did it- i steamed 3 cups of blackberries(in the rice bowl) added 3 teaspoons of lemon juice and splash of water, steamed 40 mins. sieved juice, used unused surgical stockings to get rest of juice out. it made 3/4 pint of juice; into bread maker with 3/4lb of normal sugar, jam setting, 1 hr 20 mins later -jarred. TRY IT it made 2 jars full. ooh i washed the jars in dishwasher so they were clean and hot:)
sorry that was 3 tablespoons of lemon juice
Being clever thought I had the method in my head!! I added the sugar at the stewing stage, then boiled quickly for 30 minutes after adding the lemon juice – NOTHING- didn’t set. Can I resurrect the bramble jelly by boiling again or will I have to collect more berries?
With regardes to “fetishistic jar-sterilising” being pointless, I would just like to say that ensuring your jars are well washed and sterilised is important for avoiding botulism.
Botulism produces a toxin that is potentially fatal and it can occur in sealed preserved goods, particularly those with low acid contents – like blackberry jam.
You can washing the glass jars thoroughly, letting them dry, then placing them in a cold oven and bringing it up to around 160C, holding it there for ten minutes. Ensure that you do not touch the inside of the jars with your hands or anything else during the jarring process.
This isn’t fail safe, but good hygenic practice is extremely important in home preserve making. Botulism is going to be a risk because it survives boiling temperatures, but you can take steps to counteract it.