In Oklahoma, cherries are in season, so we felt a sweet cherry jam was in order. There’s nothing more old school and wholesome than making your own jam. There’s so many benefits to homemaking jam. You know exactly what’s in it, have a great gift to give and gives you a chance to reminisce about the olden days with family. Making homemade jam can also save you money and who doesn’t want that?
This year, we decided to try a new approach to our cherry jam session. Waste less. I wouldn’t call it zero waste, but we found ways to use all the leftover parts of the ingredients. Below is the recipe.
| Prep Time | 30 minutes |
| Cook Time | 30 minutes |
| Servings | mason jars |
- 5 Cups Sweet Cherries
- 1 Packet Pectin
- 1/4 Cup Lemon
- 3 Cups Sugar
- 1/2 tsp Almond Extract
Ingredients
|
- Boil water in a stock pot. Wash jars and screw bands in hot soapy water; rinse with warm water. Let stand in hot water until ready to use. Drain jars well before filling.
- Stem and pit cherries. Chop the cherries into eighths.
- In 6-8 quart sauce pan mix in the sugar, pectin, lemon and almond extract. Then add the cherries.
- Bring mixture to full rolling boil on high heat, stirring constantly. Cook for 3 minutes.
- Take the glass jars out of the boiling water. Let the sweet cherry jam rest for 3-5 minutes before ladling it into the mason jars.
- Fill the jars to within 1/4 inch of tops. Wipe jar rims and threads. Cover with two-piece lids. Screw bands tightly.
- Put the jars into boiling water with 1 to 2 inches of water covering the top. Cook for 10 minutes, then let rest for 5 minutes. Remove jars and place upright on a towel to cool completely.
- After jars cool, check seals by pressing middles of lids with finger. (If lids spring back, lids are not sealed and refrigeration is necessary.)
So once the sweet cherry jam is made, what do we do with the rest? It’s time to get creative and this is where it gets really fun!
The cherry stems we decided to compost in our vermicomposting system.
The pits stumped us for a bit because though we found a lot of recipes for cherry pits, buy some don’t recommend it because they contain small amounts of cyanide. There’s not enough in one cherry pit to kill you, but not really recommended. So we some research and found this cool article on ways to use cherry pits in crafts.
We learned in this article that cherry bits retain more heat or cold than gel-filled products. We decided to use the cherry pits to loosely fill a heat-resistant material, denim, and keep as an ice pack.
We had a lemon peel and a half, but there are so many ways to use lemon peels! How does one choose between all these fun ways. Lemons are a great cleaner, so we knew we could use it in that way. We didn’t have enough lemon peels to make lemon vinegar, so to deodorize the garbage disposal we grind a lemon peel in the garbage disposal. We put another lemon peel in the fridge.
The pectin came in a box and wax paper packet similar to a cereal box. Common repurposing ideas for cereal box bags are using them to keep freezer items separate or as snack bags. Some people use them in place of plastic baggies and crush up ingredients such as crackers or cookies for recipes. The pectin packet was much smaller, but it’s still makes a good pouch for snacks, if you roll and clip the top down. You can store the pouch in the pectin box.
The mason jars we used to make our sweet cherry jam, we saved to store other items in.
These are our tips for making wasteless sweet cherry jam! What are your favorite ways to reuse these items?
Don’t forget to pin this recipe for later!
This is so clever. I love how you used the leftover parts and that jam looks a-mazing. Yummy!
Thank you!