We tried our hand at a simple homemade jam recipe today. I don’t really know what the recipe was, but it was basically, crush some strawberries, add some sugar and lemon juice, boil the mix til thick, and call it “jam.” But we boiled it too long and the stuff is really thick, like tar. Is there any way to fix it? We can still kind of just put hunks of it on biscuits, but spreading is out of the question…
I can’t say for sure, but my instinct would be to reheat it and add a little bit of water or apple juice and stir it back into the mixture to get it to a consistency I like. I’d think just plain ol’ water should work fine if the sweetness is where you want it.
My girlfriend and I made over 20 pounds of strawberry jam last weekend from berries we picked ourselves. A couple batches boiled too long and the result was more like syrup than jam.
Hey, looks like the second link you provided says my instinct wasn’t far off:
And if it doesn’t reset, or simply ends up too thin, you can always pour it over stuff. Ice cream, sponge cake, and so forth.
You can thin it with any suitably sweet liquid, but if you actually overcooked/ burnt it, the cooked caramely taste of burnt sugar will remain. if you just cooked it down too much, you’re fine.
What you made was preserves, by the way. In the future, test for doneness by spooning a teaspoon onto a cold plate and putting it in the freezer for a minute - when the preserve holds together in a heap, rather then separating into chunks of fruit + puddle of sugar water, it’s done.