Jellies, Jams, Preserves

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen. You know, sometimes it's really hard to say goodbye to summer's fruits and veggies

So what better way to enjoy them than by preserving them? And I mean literally

And today we're gonna do just that. But before we get started, let's run out to the garden to see if Brandon has any fresh produce for us

And then we'll head back to the kitchen where we're gonna really sweeten up things with a pear honey that's just heavenly

And then we're gonna need something to dip into all that goodness. And you know, my buttery biscuit sticks will do the trick

But that's not all, y'all. Next up, I'm going to be making a mouth-watering strawberry apricot preserve

And then to finish things up, it's a jelly that'll kick you, my pepper jelly

So come on, y'all, let's get started, because all day is jelly day

Today's show is all about canning, making preserves and jellies

And, you know, if you're going to preserve these foods, you might as well grow them too

So I'm going to take you all to a favorite little secret spot of mine

And it's a little bitty bit of a garden. And I see my buddy Brandon Branch is out here working in the garden

So let's go in and speak to him and see what all he's doing. Hey, Brandon

Hey, Paula. How's it going? It's going great. I'm getting everything ready in the house

Oh, God, I'm picking some peppers. We have a lot of jalapeno peppers coming along

and bell peppers and they're peak season right now. So I think that'd be perfect for you

to make a nice pepper jelly today with. That sounds wonderful. Explain to me, Brandon, how you're able to plant

and harvest such a beautiful garden without using pesticides. Well, I like to use marigolds

because the scent of the marigolds help keep the pest away. Also, I've been spraying the plants

with a mixture of water and liquid house soap. Really? Yeah, they don't like the suds

Well, Brandon, while you're finishing up your workout here, I'm going to take these in the house

and go on and start on this pepper jelly. So in a little while, I want you to come up to the house and taste it

Okay, great. And I want to give you some jars so you can send home to Mama. Oh, if Mama loved that

Wouldn't Mama love them? I'll see you in a little while. See you, Paula. Look at all these beautiful peppers and jalapenos that we're going to be using

And, you know, I just love jelly and preserve day. It just brings back the times that I was in the kitchen with my grandmother, Paul

And the first one I'm gonna show y'all today is pear honey. Now you can see today's pears, I'm cutting them just like a potato that you were making potato salad

So we're gonna start by putting these in the pot. And we're gonna add a large can of crushed pineapple with its juice

And I'm gonna add four nice pieces of ginger. All right, and for those that have never made jellies and preserves, this may shock you what you're fixing to see

But it requires a lot of sugar to make jellies and jams

So this could send you into a coma just watching Paula do this

But it really is required. Would you believe ten cups? All right, now we're going to cut that on and we're just going to stir that up

And you can see I'm not adding any liquid to it at all because it's going to, the sugar in the fruit and the pineapple is going to make its own syrup

Now, when my Aunt Peggy makes pear preserves, she doesn't use the ginger, but she uses actual lemon rind

But instead of putting the lemon rind in there, I just usually give it a little bit of juice

Okay, now I'm gonna move this over to this side and let this cook down

And you'll notice that I'm actually cooking mine with the lid off because I want them to thicken

I've actually got a pot of pears down here that have already been cooking for about an hour

But you can see the syrup is getting real thick and I can smell that ginger really going to work in there

All right, that sugar is finally starting to melt in our pears and our pineapple

And y'all probably heard a little jiggling going on while I've been getting all this together

Well, it's actually our jars that we're gonna pour our preserves in

and they've probably been sterilizing now for about 10 minutes. Well, the next thing I'm gonna do

is add the rings and the lids. So I gonna slip them down in there and I actually even put my tongs down in there to sterilize them And in the meantime our preserves are just a ballin away And I let them cook on up to the last

minute because you wanna fill your hot jars with a hot liquid. Cause you wanna make sure

that all your jars seal on ya and you've got that fruit good and safe. Alright, now you

You want to be really, really careful that you've got a good grip on them, because you

don't want them splashing back in that water and burning yourself or anybody that's around

you while you're doing these. All right, so these have been nice and sterilized

I can't tell you how important it is for your jars to be sterilized real good

So now we're just going to fill these jars with our pear honey

Now you want to leave about a half an inch to an inch on the top of your preserves

And my grandmother taught me to wet a paper towel and then run it around the rim of your

jars because you don't want anything interfering with that lid sealing on you

All right, now I'm going to come over here and pull this out

And they cool off rather quickly. I'm just going to make sure that's placed on there good

And then I'm going to take my ring. I'm just going to turn it until it's nice and tight

And I'm going to sit this over here so they can start cooling

All right, so on to our second jar. Look at that piece of ginger going into there

If we've done them properly, these should last a good full year

The important thing is that your jars seal. And the way you know that they're sealed

is they're gonna pop. Then you'll know that you've done it properly

and all's well. I wanna stop and go over here and give these pears a quick twirl

and make sure they're all right. When they are, you can see how the sugar has melted

and it's becoming real liquidy. So before we know it, they'll be boiling

When I'm making preserves, I cook them until they're the way I like for them to look

which would be anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. Isn't that a beautiful color

All right, I've got all the preserves filled in the jars, and I'm gonna bathe them in the same water

that I sterilized the jars in. And you'll wanna be very careful

because these jars are heavy once you fill them. All right, I've got the jars in there

so I'm gonna let that water bath for about five to 10 minutes

Now this particular jar right here is going straight into the refrigerator

and we're going to find ways to eat this up pretty quick. In fact, while I was standing up here, I thought of a way to start eating these up before they ruin on me

I just love, love, love hot sundaes, so I thought this would just be delicious

on top of this ice cream. Doesn't that look wonderful? Plus, it won't burn my mouth

Oh, my gracious. Mmm. I really don't think it matters whether I bake biscuits today or not

But whatever, that's coming up next. Our pear honey turned out so good

and I can't wait to share this little recipe with y'all because it's so deliciously simple

We're going to make some biscuit sticks. So we're going to start with some all-purpose flour

and some bacon powder. and some salt. We're just gonna sift that into our bowl

and we're gonna cut some butter into it, or I could use, like, some type of shortening

And I've got the butter in little cubes. We're just gonna dump that all in there

So we're just gonna cut that up, and you can see the butter is chilled

so you can just cut up the pieces. So now we're gonna make a well in our bowl

and we're just gonna pour our milk in there. Okay, so we're just going to work that flour into that milk

And a lot of people, especially grandmamas, do this with their hands

Oh, and speaking of hands, Michael Groover is just going to shoot me because one more

time I have forgotten to take off my rings. So I better do that

I'm going to get so in trouble. It frightens me to take them off because I so afraid I going to lose them I would be in trouble Okay now we just going to put out a little flour

Alright, and so we're just going to knead our dough just a little bit, not much. See

that made a real pretty dough. Alright, so we're just going to roll that out. You want

to make sure you've got plenty of flour because you don't want the rolling pin to stick to

your dough. Oh, that looks real pretty. All right, so now I'm gonna take my knife and I'm

gonna cut these in strips because I want them to be kind of pretty little sticks. All right

so we're gonna pat these out just a little bit and we're gonna make these just like we would a

normal biscuit, but we're just gonna cut them a little different so that you can kind of just dip

them in your preserves. Okay, we've got our biscuit sticks ready and you can see they're

just like a regular biscuit, but we've just jazzed up the shape of them a little bit

So we're just going to brush those with butter, put them into a preheated 450 degree oven

maybe for 10 to 12 minutes. But don't those look good? Okie doke and we've got some ready

over here. We've got one pan and they're moving around nicely because that pan was sprayed

as well as being cooked on a non-stick pan. So those look really good. While those cool

off a little bit, let's move on over to our preserves that we're making. This is one of

my very favorite recipes. I have found that it's the simplest of all the preserves

but normally I use figs. Well, there are no figs this time of year

so today I'm actually using apricots. And we're gonna put those in the pan, along with some sugar

Now, the trick to these preserves is strawberry gelatin. So we're just gonna let this cook

and it doesn't take very long at all. I've already got our jars sterilized

And now I'm gonna drop in the rings and I sterilize them for about two minutes

And I wanna tell you something else. It's very, very important. These lids are only for one-time use

as far as sealing them. Of course, they're fine to store in the refrigerator

but for preserves, any kind of canning, you always have to start with a new lid

That's very, very important. All right, so I've moved this pot over here

and you can see how quickly those are becoming more of a liquid

and I've got the boiling jars ready, so when we come back, we're going to take these that are ready and jar them up

and we're going to stick some biscuits in them. Okay, this is ready and looking good

So we're ready to jar this up, and our jars are just bubbling over here

So I'm going to turn that down a little bit. And I'm going to very carefully lift out the jars

You want to be careful. You don't want to burn yourself. And they actually make a lot of equipment for canning day

They actually have little jar removers. All right, I'm going to take our rings out

Oh, and those jars are still a little hot. It looks just like strawberry preserves, only the fruit is apricot

I'm going to seal that up. And you'll want to remember not screw your jars too tight

because they're going to be expanding and shrinking and all of that

so you don't want to really bear down on that ring until after they've cooled

and then you can go back and tighten them all up. And remember to leave about a half-inch head in your jar

A few minutes ago, I was making pear honey, and I cooked it a little longer than I would a normal preserve

because I wanted it to take on the color of honey, but you can also cook it a little less

and have it more the color of the pear. All right, now we're gonna process those for a few minutes

And in the meantime, we're gonna move over here and make one of my favorite jellies

that my grandmother used to make. She used to keep pepper jelly around

and it's real, real simple to make. So we're gonna take our bell pepper

and our jalapeno pepper because our pepper jelly is actually gonna have a bite to it

I also like making this with a red bell pepper. The red and green together is so pretty

So I'm gonna process this just a little bit because I want you to be able to crunch on that pepper when you eating your jelly Ooh and my gracious it smells good So we just going to put these in our pot

Like I said, these make great gifts. I remember Grandma giving everybody she knew a jar of pepper jelly

but you can fix up a cute little basket and put the cream cheese in it

and some nice crackers and have a complete little gift basket. So to this, we're going to add the sugar

and apple cider vinegar, and we're gonna add some Serto, and this is gonna act as a

thickening agent for us. Serto is a liquid fruit pacton. In fact, because we're

using this, for some reason it works this magic that's not gonna require a water

All right, see how pretty that is? The green's coming alive, but it's not quite as green as I would like it

so I'm gonna fix that by adding just a few drops of green food coloring

Okay, so all we have to do with this is just dissolve it

and it's ready to put in our jars that we have processed. So we're just gonna bring that to a bowl

and then we're gonna cut it off and load our jars. I swear I hear one of those biscuit sticks back there saying

back there saying, Paula, Paula. Yes, I knew I heard it. All right, so I'm going to come over here, since we've got some strawberry jam left

and just see how it is on that biscuit. Mmm, that's delicious

You know, I think our jars are probably processed long enough. So I'm going to very gently take these out and set them right up there

Look, did you hear that ping? That was very quick for it to seal that quick

Usually they don't seal that quickly. All right, and I'm just going to let them sit there and cool

Look how pretty those do look. All right, this looks ready now, so we're gonna seal these up

Now I have sterilized these jars, so, oh, this pepper jelly looks delicious

Look at those colors. I'm gonna clean that rim real good. When I serve this, I normally just get an eight-ounce block of cream cheese

and put it on a little platter, and then just pour the pepper jelly on top of it

So I've got some spreadable cream cheese right here, I'm just gonna make sure this is good as Granny's

I'm not even gonna wait for it to cool. Doesn't that look yummy

And of course, once it's cooled, it'll be a little thicker than that

This is great for St. Patrick's Day when you want to have everything green that you..

Oop, did y'all hear that ping? I heard another one seal. That's a very, very good sound when you're canning

and, mmm, tastes just like Grandma Paul's. When we come back, labeling and decorating

they're gonna make great gifts. When you're giving your beautiful homemade preserves

gifts, you want to jazz them up just a little bit. And I love using a fabric that coordinates

with whatever the preserve is. Just remove your ring and put your fabric on your jar so it's got

a little dress on. And see how pretty that is? And I also found the gold liquid pen laying around

the house. And it looks real pretty to just write directly on the jar. And it's very important

that I put the date on these so that the people that I give these to

will know how long they can keep it on their shelves, and people are just going to love the gift that you gave them

because you know what? It's a little piece of yourself. I hope that our time together has helped y'all to realize

not only is this yummy to the tummy, it's easy and it's almost therapeutic

and I think you're going to just love this pepper jelly. If you've never had it before, by all means, try it

And you can use the green peppers, you can use the yellow, or you can use the red

And all we're going to do, I've got just a plain block of cream cheese

And this is my favorite way to eat pepper jelly. So I hope this show has inspired y'all to get into your kitchen with your family or your dog

and take advantage of some of the things that are around you this time of year and are available

So you know, as usual, Gertie and I wish y'all best dishes from our kitchen to yours

Good girl