Plum Jam with Whisky

In return for a jar of my previous plum jam, my partner and I got to pick plums from my cousin's garden. Nice ripe plums with yellow flesh.

Since I have already made a plum jam with dark rum this year, I had to try something different with these plums. 

My habanero plants have not started to bear fruit yet, so I will have to wait a while to use them as seasoning. Even when I made my gooseberry jam earlier this year, I thought about how it would be to use a rather smoky whisky so that is what I did this time. Although the recipe is very similar, the taste and color is very different.

Yellow Swedish plums and a wee dram of whisky

As usual, I might try to do a little too much jam, but what does it matter. The scale shows almost 1500 grams.

Almost 1500 grams

Ingredients:

• 1500 g of plums, yellow flesh, pretty sweet
• 1000 g of gelling sugar / sugar with pectin
• 2 tbsp of vanilla sugar
• 6 cl of smoky whisky
• 1 dl of water

Ingredients and two of the storage jars.

A big difference from the last plums, which I bought, was that these was much more mature, which is great when eaten fresh. However, it is much more messy when they are peeled.
After peeling I took out the seeds and chopped plums.
Have a little water along with plums so that the risk of them sticking to the pot decreases.

Pealed, pitted, and chopped plums in a splash of water.

Cook the plums for 10 minutes or until they are the consistency being sought. The time will depend on how finely chopped they are and how big pieces the jam should have. I usually use my spoon to crush the pieces to the edge as I stir.
When you are satisfied, pour in the sugar.

After boiling the plums, add the gelling sugar and the vanilla sugar.

Let the sugar melt, stir a little in the meantime. Then boil everything for 5 minutes, then add the whisky.
Pour everything into clean glass jars. For this amount of marmalade, I needed two 0.5-liter bottles, a 2 deciliters jar and six small one deciliters cans. Shown in the picture below.
I also placed a jar from the previous plum jam I made to show the contrast in color. The obvious conclusion will be, that not only is it difficult to know and learn what you like best in the form of fruits, consistency and accessories when it comes to jams, there are important nuances of taste and appearance of the same fruit as well.

The result and a wee dram for the chef.

To highlight the differences, I took a close-up picture. Their colors are nice and their flavors are fantastic.

Lovely contrast in color and taste.

Smoky whisky or not smoky whisky. That's a good question.
I, who appreciate a the smoky whisky when the time is right, think it turned out very well with the smoky whisky in the plum jam. But I think right now it might still fit better with a slightly lighter smokiness to the gooseberry jam.