Ground Cherry Jam

Sitting in the kitchen hunched over a huge bin of ground cherries husking them one by one, we had the discussion- "why are we doing this (making jam), again?" Oh yeah. Because we went through so much trouble to harvest all of them and making jam is a good way to use a large quantity. So is it worth it to do so much work (planting) just to create more (harvesting) and more work (preserving) for ourselves? Pieter joined our "circle" happily munching on ground cherries to the tune of- one for the jam, one for Pieter. We couldn't husk them fast enough! Maybe it is worth it. And the jam turned out really well- well, we think so, but we'd never had ground cherry jam before.  It has a nice tang but is still plenty sweet and is reminiscent of pineapple-y marmalade.

husked ground cherries

Here is the recipe that Vince found and altered as he saw fit. We actually trippled this recipe despite all of the warnings not to double jam recipes and it was fine: 
 




3 cups ground cherries
1/4 cup lemon juice (he used fresh squeezed from 4 lemons in our tripled recipe)
grated lemon rind
1/2 cup water
1 box pectin

Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  Once the ground cherries start splitting, mash with a potato masher.

Add 3 cups sugar. Continue stirring and return to a boil.  Boil according to pectin package: 1-3 minutes.

Process in a boiling water canner 5 minutes. (We tried turning one batch upside down for 5 minutes and then right side up without processing in water and they also sealed.)

Tripled, this made 16 half-pints of jam.

The crushed fruit rose to the top of the jar, but still set well.