A Proper Use for a Glut of Hedgerow Fruit

Come late August, the hedgerows round here start to sag under their own weight, and anyone with a few miles of country lane within reach soon finds themselves with more blackberries than they know what to do with. Friends stop answering the door when you arrive with another tub. But bramble jelly is the answer to that particular problem, and it is one of the quiet heroes of the British pantry. A good bramble jelly is deep, dark purple, sharply fruity and just bouncy enough to wobble on a scone without sliding off. It keeps for a year, it makes a handsome gift, and it uses up the fruit that is too small or too seedy to bother with in a crumble.

There is no special kit and no particular skill involved. Jelly is simply juice, sugar and patience, and the only parts that matter are straining the fruit properly and catching the set at the right moment.

Picking and Preparing Your Blackberries

Pick on a dry day, ideally after a couple of dry days, as wet fruit dilutes the juice and can encourage mould. Choose berries that come away from the stem with almost no tug; the truly ripe ones drop into the hand. Leave the red and half-ripe ones behind, as they add little colour and a hard, green edge to the flavour. Brambles are low in pectin, the natural setting agent, so it is worth including a handful of sloes if you have them, or a couple of crab apples, or simply adding lemon juice later.

At home, tip the fruit into a colander and pick out leaves, stalks and the occasional uninvited insect. Do not wash unless you must, and if you must, rinse briefly and drain well. A few berries with a little white mould should be discarded, but a stray over-ripe one will do no harm.

What You Will Need

• A large heavy-based pan or preserving pan, with plenty of headroom
• A jelly bag and stand, or a clean muslin square tied over the legs of an upturned stool
• A long-handled wooden spoon
• A jam thermometer, though this is optional
• Two or three saucers, kept in the freezer
• A funnel, a ladle and a jug
• Clean jars, sterilised, plus lids or wax discs and cellophane covers

Roughly speaking, 1.3kg of prepared fruit will give you about 900ml of juice, which makes four to five jars of 340g. Small batches set far more reliably than large ones, so do not be tempted to double up unless you have a very wide pan.

Cooking the Fruit and Straining the Juice

Put the blackberries in the pan with just enough water to stop them catching, about 150ml per kilogram of fruit. Bring to a gentle simmer, then cook for 20 to 30 minutes, crushing the fruit against the side of the pan with the back of your spoon as it softens. You are after a soft, sloppy pulp and a pan full of dark, fragrant juice.

Now comes the part that decides whether your jelly is clear or cloudy. Tip the pulp into the jelly bag or muslin and leave it to drip, undisturbed, for at least eight hours and preferably overnight. Do not squeeze the bag. It is tempting, especially when you can see how much juice is still in there, but squeezing forces fine particles through the cloth and gives you a hazy, slightly gritty jelly. Patience here is the whole trick.

Measure the strained juice. If you want a firmer set, add the juice of one lemon per 600ml.

Boiling with Sugar and Testing the Set

Return the juice to the cleaned pan and bring it to the boil. Add 450g of granulated or preserving sugar for every 600ml of juice, stirring until it has completely dissolved and then leaving it alone. Once it is at a rolling boil, start timing. It will take anywhere from eight to twenty minutes, depending on the fruit, the water content and the width of your pan.

Skim off the scum as it rises, using a slotted spoon, and keep the boil going hard. To test for a set, drop a teaspoon of jelly onto a chilled saucer, leave it for a minute, then push it with your finger. If the surface wrinkles and the jelly holds its shape rather than running, it is ready. A thermometer should read 104°C to 105°C. If it is not there yet, boil for another two minutes and test again. Better to test three times too often than to end up with blackberry syrup.

Potting, Sealing and Keeping

Turn off the heat and let the pan settle for a minute so the scum rises, then skim once more. Ladle the hot jelly through a funnel into warm, sterilised jars, filling to within 5mm of the rim. Wipe the rims clean with a damp cloth, then seal. Traditional wax discs pressed onto the surface followed by a cellophane cover look lovely and work perfectly well; screw-top lids are quicker and just as effective.

Label once cool, and store somewhere dark and cool. The jelly will be soft for the first day or two and firms up nicely over a fortnight. Once opened, keep it in the fridge. Serve it with scones, warm bread, cold roast lamb, or stirred into a gravy for game. And next September, when the hedgerows are heavy again, you will know exactly what to do with them.