Food - Drink
David Lebovitz's Easy Ratio For Making Jam Without A Recipe
By BRIANNA CORLEY
Created by cooking fruit, sugar, and pectin together, jam is well-loved by bakers for its decadent fruity flavor and ability to stand up to hot oven temperatures. Famed pastry chef David Lebovitz, who has 9 cookbooks to his name, has an easy-to-remember formula for making jam on the fly without a recipe.
Jam can be thicker or thinner, depending on your preference, but it does have to be set properly so it's not soupy, nor unfit to preserve your fruit. Lebovitz says that after you pick and choose which fruits you'd like to preserve, and in what amount, you just have to measure out the proper amount of sugar to go with it.
Lebovitz's golden ratio for jam is to use "¾ of the amount of sugar" for the amount of fruit you have; for instance, if you have 4 cups of fruit, you'll need to add 3 cups of sugar to ensure your jam is correctly preserved. Once you've memorized this simple rule, you'll never have to look at a jam recipe again.