Fig is an extremely tasty, sweet fruit that works perfectly when served raw, dried, as an ingredient in cakes, salads and as a base for jams. It grows best in sunny, warm places and is undemanding to the soil. Depending on the species, the peel of the figs may be yellow or purple, and the pulp is generally pink or deep red. As I have probably mentioned to you, I am lucky that my family has fig trees and I can eat these delicious fruits every year. This year the figs have picked up a lot and from just one tree I managed to harvest a little over 40 kg of fruit, which was probably only half of all the fruit on that one tree. I was not able to eat so much of it, so I made a lot of jam.
To prepare the fig jam, I used ripe figs, sugar – both crystal and brown, vanilla and lemon juice. As figs are very sweet, there is no need to overdo it with sugar, but you still need to add it to keep the jam for at least a few months. I didn’t cut figs into cubes or small pieces, quite the opposite. It took me the longest to cook the already cut fruit. I write cooking but at some point when the water and juice evaporate significantly, the fruit starts to fry too. It is important to stir the frying fruits from time to time, because if left alone, they can get burnt. I put the hot jam into jars right away, and I also pasteurized it. I encourage you to reach for the following recipe for fig jam and I hope you will find it as tasty as I did.
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Ingredients for fig jam.
- 4 kg figs
- 250 g light brown sugar
- 250 g crystal sugar
- 150 ml lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
- 500 ml water
How to make fig jam.
Wash the figs, put them in a colander and set aside to drain. Then, cut each larger fig into 6 parts, the smaller ones into 4. Put the chopped figs in a large pot, add water, brown sugar, crystal sugar, lemon juice and vanilla. Bring it to a boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer for about 6 hours, stirring occasionally. Put the hot jam into jars, close tightly and pasteurize.
Good to know when making fig jam.
The finished jam should have a consistency similar to that of fried apples. Personally, I do not like jam that is too hard, so I do not fry figs longer than the time I mentioned above.
The time to pasteurize the jam depends on the size of the jars used. My favourite thing to do is to keep my jam in small jars, such as 150 to 200 ml. I pasteurize these jars for about 10 minutes. In fact, if you put hot jam in jars, there is no need to pasteurize it, I do it out of habit. After putting the hot jam in the jar, I close the jar tightly with the lid. I pour water into a wide pot, put a cloth on the bottom and put the jars. There should be enough water in the pot to reach 3/4 of the height of each jar. I pasteurize the jars over low heat in very slowly boiling water. After removing them from the pot, I put the jars on a kitchen cloth upside down and leave them in that position for 24 hours.
Do you like fig dishes? If so, try our recipe for Shortbread cake with cream and figs.
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