jelly

30 Ways to Use Up a Jar of Preserves

Max Wong — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 17:02:42 +0000

Right now there are approximately 457 varieties of jelly, jam, and fruit butter in my refrigerator, all in various stages of decomposition. My husband loves jam on toast for breakfast. He eats it every day. Unfortunately, he belongs to the "Why own one when you can own the entire collection?" camp of people. He's constantly scraping the moldy top off of his morning bread sweetener, a habit I find stomach-churning. Also, his proclivity to buy more food than he can possibly eat makes me slightly crazy. I hate wasting food. "Can I help it if I crave variety?" he tells me.

So I've become an expert at using up small amounts of jam by putting it…

… in pretty much everything. Here are 30 ways you can do the same.

1. Flavor Your Own Yogurt

Here's what your strawberry-flavored yogurt should contain: milk, live probiotic yogurt cultures, and strawberries. Here's what a very common brand of yogurt contains: cultured pasteurized Grade A low fat milk, sugar, strawberries, modified corn starch, high fructose corn syrup, nonfat milk, kosher gelatin, citric acid, tricalcium phosphate, natural flavor, pectin, carmine, vitamin A Acetate, and vitamin D3.

For a better, more nutritious version of fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt, add some of your favorite jam or marmalade to plain yogurt of your choosing. Your tongue and your wallet will thank you.

2. Blend It Into Smoothies

Do you prefer to drink your yogurt on the way to work? Add jam to sweeten your breakfast shake.

3. Pair It With Ice Cream

Fold your favorite jam into ice cream to create custom flavors or simply use it as a sundae topping.

4. Make Popsicles

Add leftover fruit preserves to juice or milk to add both flavor and texture to homemade popsicles.

5. Bake Thumbprint Cookies

For what amounts to basically a drop cookie, thumbprint cookies are surprisingly glamorous. They are a great, colorful addition to holiday gift baskets.

6. Whip Up Easy Bar Cookies for Bake Sales

Did you fall off the school email list? Did your child forget to tell you about the bake sale happening today? Are you facing a charity auction buffet table deadline? Bust out this top-rated bar cookie recipe, for easy, speedy baking. To up-sell your homemade cookies, use this tip from a Wise Bread reader: Put the bake sale cookies on a pretty thrift store plate for added value.

7. Fill Pop Tarts

Once you make your own Pop-Tarts, you'll never want to go back to store bought toaster pastries. Personally, I like to make my own crust, but even the most novice bakers can handle this four-ingredient recipe that uses pre-made pie crust.

8. Improve Your Cheese Plate Game

Instead of using apples or grapes as cheese accompaniments, put the dregs of your jam collection into pretty dishes, and serve them with cheese and crackers. Your guests don't have to know that they are helping you clean out your refrigerator.

9. Replicate My Mother-in-Law's Go-To Appetizer

My mother-in-law is not a brilliant cook, but you wouldn't know that from her baked Brie cheese appetizer. Here's the Top Secret recipe:

Line a jellyroll or cake pan with parchment. Place a wheel of Brie cheese in the center of the pan. Pour one jar of apricot jam over the cheese. Bake in the oven on parchment at 400 degrees until the cheese softens, taking care not to burn the jam. Remove the jam-topped cheese from the oven and slide the whole shebang onto a serving dish. Liberally sprinkle the top with sliced almonds. Serve with French bread.

Or, if you are alone, eat the jam and cheese with a spoon out of the pan while binge watching Orange is the New Black. Not that I've ever done this personally, or anything.

10. "It's Chinese Food If I Make It" Orange Chicken

My Chinese grandfather owned a Chinese restaurant in Denver for 40 years. Unable to source many authentic ingredients, he would regularly invent entrees that fancy chefs would now refer to as "fusion cuisine" using locally sourced supplies. (And 25 years after his death, I am still trying to replicate his plum sauce BBQ ribs recipe without success). When questioned about his "pan-Coloradan" dishes, he would always reply, "It's Chinese food if I make it." Who can argue with that logic?

My grandfather did make an authentic Cantonese chicken dish that used dried orange peel in a vinegar reduction. However, the dish that friends and neighbors used to beg him to make for potluck dinner parties was his sticky chicken AKA fried chicken glazed with orange marmalade.

11. Fill Crepes

Crepes is a French word meaning, "a fancy, alternative jam delivery system for people who like to eat the preserves straight from the jar."

12. Top Pancakes

Why drive to IHOP when you can replicate their flavored syrups at home?

13. Sweeten Hot Cereal

Jam is not just for toast. Add it to oatmeal or cream of wheat.

14. Stuff French Toast

This is a great thrifty recipe as it uses both stale bread and leftover jam! Make a sandwich out of stale white bread and your favorite fruit preserve. Then soak the sandwich in egg batter before pan-frying it in butter.

15. Turn Breakfast Into Brunch With Croque Monsieur Sandwiches

A croque monsieur is basically the unholy love child of stuffed French toast and a grilled cheese sandwich. Proceed with caution.

16. Make Strawberry Shortcake, No Knife Skills Necessary

Bisquick? Check. Jam? Check. Whipping Cream? Check. This Old Fashioned shortcake recipe graced the first Bisquick box in 1931. Substituting jam for sliced strawberries makes this dessert an easy and safe introduction to baking for kids and adults with terrible knife skills.

17. Dress Up Cheesecake

Let's face it. Cheesecake is a dumpy-looking dessert. The addition of fruit topping will make plain cheesecake look slightly less fug. To make your own fruit glaze, mix jam with water or your favorite liqueur, and heat it on the stovetop until liquid. Brush or pour over plain cheesecake.

18. Tart Up a Tart

Leave it to David Lebovitz to make something delicious out of quince jam! His no-roll crust makes this tart recipe even easier to replicate at home with professional results.

19. Layer a Cake

Why not fill a coconut layer cake with lime marmalade or turn chocolate cake into black forest cake with the cherry jam?

20. Make a Kentucky Jam Cake

Or make a super-moist Kentucky jam cake by adding jam to the batter?

21. Turn Packaged Chocolate Into Fancy Desserts

With the addition of fruit preserves, your dinner party guests will never guess that the chocolate orange mousse was made with pudding mix or the chocolate cherry brownies came from a box.

22. Pavlova: It's Aussie for "Use Up That Jam, Mate"

But, don't tell that to New Zealanders who claim pavlova, flat white coffee, and Phar Lap the famous racehorse as national treasures. Pavlova, a wondrous combination of fruit and meringue, comes in many forms. All of them, delicious.

23. BBQ Chicken With Homemade BBQ Sauce

Mix your favorite jam or marmalade with oil and soy sauce. You've just made a yummy coating for roast chicken.

24. Pour It Over Ham

That same glaze that you use for cake can also be used to glaze ham.

25. Create Your Own Secret Sauce for Beef

Mix jam with vinegar, mustard, and garlic to make your own steak sauce.

26. Add It to Au Jus

Add cranberry sauce to pan gravy to make Thanksgiving leftovers sing. Or, mix blueberry jam into beef gravy for Sunday night's British roast.

27. Make Succulent Pork Loin

Personally, I prefer to substitute leftover cranberry sauce for the blueberry jam in this tenderloin recipe. But really, does the jam flavor even matter if you wrap everything in bacon?

28. Salad Dressing

People love to hate on Rachael Ray, but personally I love her casual cooking style. Why use a salad cruet when you can mix fruit vinaigrette right in the almost empty jam jar? Just add the other ingredients to the jam jar and shake to combine.

29. Stirred, Not Shaken

Speaking of shaking, add fruit preserves to your favorite vodka recipe to make a sweet jamtini. It's cooler than a cosmopolitan.

For gin drinkers, try the jam cocktail. It's the signature drink of Madam Geneva, the famous New York watering hole.

30. Channel Your Inner Betty Draper With Cocktail Meatballs

This classic Minnesota hot dish gets its mid-century comfort food flavor from a secret ingredient: grape jelly.

What is your favorite jam user-upper recipe? Please share a link to your favorite dish with your fellow thrifty cooks in the comments section.

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This article is from Max Wong of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

8 Good Reasons to Learn Canning Now

Marla Walters — Thu, 30 May 2013 10:36:34 +0000

Although my mother made her own preserves for years, I didn't bother to learn. I could always pick up exotic chutneys or fancy jams in local stores. We didn't live in places where we had fruit trees or many berries, so I didn't find any compelling reason to learn. (See also: Homebrewed Beer: The Result)

And then, we moved.

While I was thrilled to suddenly have mangoes, cherries, passion fruit, guava, berries, and other fruits in abundance, I also realized that they were going to go to waste unless I did something with them. My husband bought me a canning set from the hardware store, which came with a great instruction book, and I learned how to can. So, why should you learn how to can?

1. It's Really Not Hard or Scary

Folks, if I can make jelly, so can you. After making a batch of mango jam a couple of weeks ago, my neighbor said, "I want to learn, but all that sterilizing and boiling and stuff intimidates me." It's not like you need a sterile laboratory. You do need to follow the steps closely, measure ingredients, and time the stages. That's it.

2. Waste Not, Want Not

Besides dealing with our own produce, it is not unusual for a neighbor to show up with a bag of fruit. Sometimes at a farmers market you will find a great deal on large quantities. If you learn to can, you can put those mangoes, berries, apples, or whatever to good use. We have even made white wine jelly, which is delicious and can be made from very inexpensive white wine. Wise Bread's Thursday Bram has shared a great mint jelly recipe, complete with very easy instructions.

3. You'll Always Have Christmas, Hostess, or Other Gifts

People seem to enjoy receiving jams, jellies, and chutneys as gifts. I love the fact that they are all done well before the Christmas "rush." It is also really nice to have an inventory of gifts ready to go for emergencies.

4. You Can Save Money

I just made mango jam, which cost me .25 per jar. The cheapest mango jam I could find to buy was $2.49 a jar! That's a pretty amazing savings.

5. DIY Is Fun

I know, that sounds silly, but it's true. Learning how to preserve food really is fun, especially if you are a person who likes DIY projects.

6. Minimal Storage Required

Some DIY projects take up a lot of space, so when I started canning, I was a little worried about that. However, all of my equipment fits nicely in a 58-quart plastic storage container.

7. Canning Equipment Is Inexpensive

My canning kit included a black granny-ware canner (yes, that's a funny description), a jar lifter, a funnel, 12 jars with lids and bands, and the Ball Blue Book canning guide. It was about $65 five years ago. The sets are widely available in hardware stores and on the Internet. The Ball set is extremely well-made and it has held up beautifully. My neighbors all bring back their empty jelly jars, as well as others they collect, which is very nice. I rarely have to buy new jars. You can often find canning jars at yard sales, and you can even get reusable jar lids now.

8. Mistakes Are Delicious

My mother's best accidental creation was dubbed "Plum Runny." Meant to be plum jam, something went awry, so we tried it on pancakes as syrup. It was amazing, and from then on, she just made Plum Runny. I personally have a store of Lilikoi Syrup in my pantry, which is similarly fantastic. In some recipes, if your jelly hasn't set, you can simply re-make it, to get the consistency desired.

There are great books out there for beginning canners, and the Internet has loads of information. I would love to hear what kinds of preserves you have made — please share in comments!

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This article is from Marla Walters of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

11 Ways to Update Peanut Butter and Jelly

Meg Favreau — Fri, 20 May 2011 10:36:21 +0000

Most of us have been eating peanut butter and jelly sandiwches since we first moved to solid food. Inexpensive, quick, and easy to pack, it's unsurprising that many of us continue to nosh on these sandwiches well into adulthood. But the ubiquitous PB&J can also get a little boring after a while. Try one of these easy variations to add some excitement to the old sandwich. (See also: Sex Up Your Sandwich: Ideas for Budget-Concious Brown Baggers)

1. Use Other Butters

Cashew butter, almond butter, and sesame seed butter all taste great. Most — especially cashew butter and almond butter — are available in both crunchy and smooth.

2. Make PB&J for Breakfast

What's better than peanut butter and jelly? Peanut butter and jelly drenched in maple syrup. Rachel Ray has a recipe for peanut butter and jelly french toast sticks.

3. Go Elvis

The King loved his peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Give a hat tip to Elvis by adding sliced banana between your peanut butter and jelly. Or try other fresh fruits like sliced apples or pears.

4. Grill It

The bread gets toasty, and the filling gets gooey and warm. It's a perfect quick winter comfort meal.

5. Add Raisins

...or dried cranberries, chopped prunes, or any other dried fruit.

6. Prepare a Pina PB&J

Sprinkle a layer of shredded coconut (preferably unsweetened) between the peanut butter and the jelly.

7. Lose the Bread

Almond butter and jam with raisins between two rice cakes is one of my favorite travel snacks — plus it's gluten-free. You can also try PB&J wrapped in a tortilla, on pizza crust, or on banana bread for a decadent dessert sandwich.

8. Toast Up PB&J S'mores

Add a layer of peanut butter and a layer of jelly to graham crackers before smushing them in with chocolate and a soft marshmallow.

9. Prepare PB&J Pie Pockets

These handheld peanut butter and jelly pockets look a little like Uncrustables, but feature peanut butter and jelly inside of a flaky pie crust.

10. Use a Savory Jelly or Jam

My mom gave me a jar of red pepper jelly for Christmas. It's a great pairing for cheeses, but also makes for a totally different peanut butter and jelly experience.

11. Put PB&J on Your Burger

This might sound like an example of two sandwiches that should never meet, but peanut butter and jelly burgers are popping up at restaurants across the United States. The key, it seems, is to choose your jam carefully. Very carefully.

Do you make a great, atypical peanut butter and jelly sandwich? What variations am I missing? Share in the comments!

This article is from Meg Favreau of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Getting Started with Preserving: Mint Jelly

Thursday Bram — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:00:02 +0000

When I was little, my grandmother would can all sorts of things. She had a big garden full of produce that would wind up in jars in her pantry. She'd pick up grape juice on sale and make her own grape jelly. She'd even head down to the bulk store and pick up more fruit and vegetables to can on occasion. On the other hand, I can't remember my mother ever canning anything. With a pretty big garden of my own, along with a habit of also shopping in bulk, I've found myself following in my grandmother's footprints. I've had to figure out where to start, though, because I don't remember quite as much of how my grandmother canned certain things as I would like.

If you're considering where to start with canning, I'd recommend mint jelly. It sounds like a strange choice — what do most people use mint jelly on besides lamb? But the mint jelly you make yourself will be far different than the neon green stuff you find at the supermarket, and it's an ideal starter recipe because it's surprisingly easy to make. It also doesn't hurt that if you're also into gardening, mint is a great starter plant.

A Basic Mint Jelly Recipe

1 1/2 cups mint leaves
2 1/4 cups water
2 tbsp lemon juice
3 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3 ounces (1 pouch) liquid pectin

You'll need four clean 8-ounce mason jars, along with a boiling-water canner and cheesecloth. If you don't have a canner, you can use a large saucepan or stockpot that is at least 3 inches deeper than the height of your jars. I've yet to find cheesecloth at my grocery store, but the local craft store always has it.

Place your jars on a rack in the canner and fill both the jars and canner with cool water, until the water reaches the top of the jars. Cover the canner and bring water to a simmer over medium heat, but don't let it boil.

Set the screw bands for your four jars to the side — you don't want to heat them. Place the lids in a small saucepan and cover with water. Heat the water over medium heat until it simmers, but don't let it boil. Keep your lids warm until you're ready to use them.

Rinse your mint leaves thoroughly. Shake of the extra water and chop the leaves finely. Place the leaves and water in a large saucepan. Bring it to a boil over medium-high heat. Once it boils, remove the pan from heat, cover, and let it steep for ten minutes.

Pour the mint liquid into a sieve or colander lined with cheesecloth. Let it drain until you have 1 3/4 cups of liquid without mint leaves. In a clean saucepan, combine the liquid, lemon juice, and sugar. Bring it to a full rolling boil while stirring constantly. Add the liquid pectin and allow it to boil for one more minute as you stir. Take the pan off the heat and skim off the foam that has built up on top of the mixture. Move fast, though, since jellies can set up for quickly.

Remove a jar from the canner and place a canning funnel in it (a canning funnel is just a funnel with a very wide mouth). Pour the hot jelly into the jot jar very carefully. Leave 1/4 inch of space between the jelly and the top of the jar. Wipe the jar rim and threads to remove any food residue. Take a hot lid from the water and place it on the jar. Put the screw band on the jar and fasten it to fingertip-tight. Put the jar back in the canner and repeat the process with the rest of your jars.

When all four jars are full, lower the rack back into the canner. Your jars should be covered with at least one inch of hot water. Cover the canner and bring it to a full boil. Allow it boil for ten minutes. At the end of that time, turn off the heat and remove the lid. After an additional five minutes, remove the jars, without tilting. Set your jars in a draft-free place and let cool for 24 hours.

Check the seals on your jars after 24 hours. Take off the screw bands and press down down on the center of the lid. A sealed lid will be curved downward and won't move when you press it. If a jar didn't seal properly, it must be refrigerated or used immediately or reprocessed.

There are a lot of steps in this recipe, but nothing that's actually hard to do. As long as you can boil water, you can make mint jelly. This type of jelly tastes great with a lot of different items. Personally, I like it with my biscuits in the morning.

This article is from Thursday Bram of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: