Rhubarb jam

We have a rhubarb patch in our garden - I would say there are about three or four crowns packed together in the one spot, and every year we have been here it has produced a good 2 - 3 kilos of tangy goodness!

I made a kilo and a half of rhubarb jam earlier in the year amongst other things which was delicious, and I thought that perhaps that I had harvested my lot... but it would seem that with all the wet weather the crowns have undergone a renaissance, and I was able to pick a further kilo the other day with only one thing on my mind... more jam!

So, here we go - how to make rhubarb jam. First of all you will need:

1kg of rhubarb
1kg jam sugar (containing pectin)
1 lemon (although both times I have used an orange)

Firstly, I cut the rhubarb into chunks add them to a large pan with the juice from the orange and soften them over a medium heat.

As the edges of the rhubarb chunks start breaking up, I add the sugar.

At this point, you wonder how on earth you will get rid of all the sugar, but after a bit of a stir it melts into a syrup.

This is the key part - get the fruity syrup in the pan up to a running boil and time 4 minutes.

After the four minutes are up, turn off the heat, grab a spoon (not your finger!) and get a blob of the syrup and put it on a cold plate... after 30 seconds or so, if you push your finger through the syrupy blob, it should wrinkle, meaning that it will set (if that doesn't work, boil the syrup for a few more minutes).

If you have a lot of bubbles formed on the top, after a few minutes you can whisk that layer off the top with a slice - however, in order to keep more of the jam I decided to quickly stir them in whilst the syrup was still molten (jam perfectionists will shudder as they read this).

Then decant into sterile recepticles (preferably jars - as you can see, I didn't have any), et voila! Let it cool down and set, and then you're ready to go!