Rhubarb & Honey Jam

With the health issues of my wife and sons I make jams and fruit desserts for them out of natural ingredients and artificial sweeteners, every spring I make Rhubarb & Honey Jam for them.

Although you can pick Rhubarb all summer long and into the fall the best time to pick Rhubarb is in the spring when it is the sweetest.

Honey is a natural preservative so the ingredients of this recipe are simple Rhubarb and Honey, sometimes to change up the jam a little I add sugar free Strawberry Jell-O to the recipe.

The rhubarb I picked myself and the honey I got from a local producer, this jam takes two hours to make.

Start by gathering your ingredients and supplies.

2 cups diced rhubarb

2 cups honey

½ cup water

1 packet sugar free Jell-O

Tools

Knife

Cutting board

250 ml containers

Funnel

A large bowl

Cooking Spoon

Measuring cup

Pot

Start by trimming the ends of the rhubarb removing the leaves and the root from the stems.

Then dice the rhubarb into manageable pieces place them in the pot.

Add the honey and water to the pot and simmer until the rhubarb is soft.

Let stand in pot to cool, at this time if you want to change up the recipe a little add the Jell-O.

Pasteurized honey is heated to 160˚ pasteurizing honey is a different thing than pasteurizing dairy products. One of the few things that can live in honey is yeast, all nectar the source for all honey and it contains osmophilic yeasts, which can reproduce in higher-moisture content honey and cause fermentation. Although fermented honey does not necessarily pose any health risk the rhubarb can encourage it by adding moisture, so you need to pasteurize the rhubarb and honey to kill any latent yeast cells that might be present and to remove any chance of fermentation.

Wash and let dry the bottles prior to filling with jam.

Using the funnel add the jam to the bottle to just below the screw on lip.

Screw the lids on the jars loosely.

Once you have filled the jam jars place them in a pot with water that goes half way up the jars and boil the water for thirty minutes.

Remove the jam jars from the boiling water and tighten the lids and let stand until the jars are cool checking the lids periodically to make sure they are sealed.

This is the easiest recipe for jam I have ever used since Honey is a natural preservative there are very few ingredients.