Name: Easy Blackberry Preserve Recipe
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 13 h 5 min
Ingredients: 5 pounds fresh blackberries; 1 ¼ cup sugar; 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Discover > Texas Recipes > Easy Blackberry Preserve Recipe

Texas Blackberry season is here!

Throughout May and into early June, countless punnets of blackberries (how long do blackberries last?) are harvested and sold across the Lone Star State. These berries tolerate even the hottest of Texas summers and are often found in and around country roads and fields. Blackberries also make excellent fruit plants for home landscapes. Are you looking for a neat way to use up plenty of blackberries? Let me share with you a fabulous preserve recipe!

If you don’t know, preserves are whole fruits that are slow cooked in sugar – a traditional technique used plenty in the past to preserve seasonal fruits. This blackberry preserve is great on a charcuterie (What wine goes well with charcuterie?) board, in a homemade pie, or even as an ice cream topping!

Blackberry Preserve Ingredients

Blackberries

Fresh blackberries are the key ingredient for this preserve. Blackberries don’t continue to ripen after picking, meaning the best time to harvest blackberries is when they are at their ripest. Avoid mushy, over-ripe fruit – your homemade preserves will only taste as good as the fruit you use.

Lemon juice

Lemon juice adds tartness to balance the sweetness in your blackberry preserve. It also adds acidity and natural pectin (how long does pectin last?), which helps to set your homemade preserve.

Sugar

Sugar has some unique properties that enable it to preserve food. Sugar preserves food products by removing moisture from their cells. The lack of moisture prevents organisms that cause spoilage from multiplying. Preserves have extended shelf life because they contain sugar as the main preservative.

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Tools and Equipment for Making Blackberrry Preserves

If you’re wanting to make preserves for the first time, there’s no need for fancy state-of-the-art equipment. Remember, this is a technique that’s been passed down several generations, and no special appliances were needed back in the day.

Large pot
Heavy-bottomed pots are best for cooking preserves.

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Kitchen scale
A kitchen scale allows you to measure ingredients in weight rather than in volume for more accurate recipes.

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Jars
Use special canning jars designed to withstand the high temperatures of steam pressure processing and the low temperatures of freezing.

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Jar lifter
Jar lifters are used to safely and securely lift jars out of the hot water.

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Jar preparation

Sterilizing is a crucial part of preservation that removes harmful bacteria. Skipping this step will result in your preserves potentially becoming contaminated, meaning they may spoil quickly. To fully sterilize the jars, they need to be submerged in boiling water for at least 10 minutes.

Timing is important, because hot preserves should be placed in hot jars – it’s best to start sterilizing your jars when the preserves are about 20 minutes away from being ready.

Want to know more on this topic? Check out TexasRealFood’s top tips for prepping preserves.

TIPS!

Cooking your preserves for too long will result in a poor texture. And cooking them too fast will result in a runny texture.
Do not add hot preserves to cold jars – this may cause your jars to crack!

Do not cut, chop, or puree the fruit for chunky textured preserves.

Yield: 8 Half Pint Jars

Author: Mariano Clement Gupana