For this month’s can jam the theme is Herbs! tigress and the awesome food in jars lady picked this out for us, and yet again it is a challenge. Challenge narrowing down the choices that is. I adore herbs, I would be hard pressed to select my favorite, but my favorite(s) usually involve tomato sauce, it is the Italian in me that screams for the red. And it is so not tomato season yet – so I will have to wait.
Once again I find myself turning to my hubster for inspiration. Out of nowhere I ask him “What’s your favorite herb?”. Accustomed to these sort of non sequiturs from me he takes it in stride. After some thought he says “Mint”.
Mint it is!
I went through a phase last fall where I was obsessed with the idea of herb jellies. Where most canning recipes are adamant about following them exactly or oh my GOD you are going to kill your friends and family with the BOTULISM and they will put you in canning JAIL, the herb jelly recipes actually encourage playing a little fast and loose with the ingredients.
Woo Hoo.
And what encourages more fastness and looseness than RUM*?
Mojito Jelly: adapted from Herb Jelly recipe in the Complete Book of Small-batch Preserving
The Hardware: see The Canning Thing, makes 4 half pints with a little left over – so if you have a 1/4 pint jar it would be a good thing, strainer & coffee filter.
The Software:
3/4 C Water
1/2 C Light Rum
Bunch of Fresh Mint
3 1/2 C Sugar (I think I might have goofed up here but more on that later)
1 C Fresh Squoozed Lime Juice (10 limes – which weighed in @ 2 lbs total weight)
2 T Lemon Juice
1 T Additional Rum
1 Pouch Liquid Pectin
Combine3/4 C water with 1/2 C rum in a large saucepan. Add in mint. The original recipe called for 2 T of mint – and really who the heck are they kidding? I bought a big bunch and pulled the leaves off and threw them in the pot until it looked like enough. And for me “enough” was so that I pretty much couldn’t see the liquid any more, I figure it was probably a loosely packed 1/2 C or tightly packed 1/4 C. Put in enough to get your mojo working.
Bring to a boil and then turn the heat off. Cover and allow to steep for awhile. The original recipe said 5 minutes – I am guessing I gave it 20. Put your strainer over a liquid measure and line with your coffee filter, pour in mixture and allow to drain. Pick up the filter and squeeze gently to get all of the liquid out and discard the filter. Measure out 1 C of the mint infused liquid and put in a large non-reactive cooking pot on the stove.
I am going to assume that you already squoozed your limes – I nuked mine for 30 seconds to get more juice out of them. Add all of the other ingredients except the liquid pectin to the pot and crank up the heat. Stir pretty much constantly until you reach a full rolling boil that cannot be stirred down. That is totally “jamming” speak and what it means is the stuff is going to foam up like boiling lava and unless you stir it like the bejeebus it is going to overflow your pot and turn your range into a disaster area. That is why you need a big pot. Way bigger than you ever think you could possibly need.
Once you have reached the “full rolling boil” dump in the entire pack of liquid pectin. If you haven’t used liquid pectin before – here is a trick. Have a short glass that the pouch fits in sitting beside the stove. Cut the top all the way off before you get started and set it in the glass so it doesn’t tump over. Now you can just pick it up and squeeze it in without fiddling with anything because hey, molten lava sugar is not the time go dinking around with your pectin packet. The pectin will knock back your boil, but keep on stirring – it will revive shortly and shut down European air space.
Once you have regained FRB set a timer for 1 minute and maintain FRB while stirring for 1 full minute. Then turn off the heat. Do the canning thing and fill your jars with the goodness. Leave 1/4 inch headspace and BWB for 10 minutes – adjusted for your altitude. It takes 15 at my house, your house may vary.
The Good, the Bad and the … there was no Ugly I guess
I am pretty sure I left out 1/2 C of sugar in my measuring. I was lazy and measured directly into the pot, which is like measuring salt over your mixing bowl while baking. DON’T DO IT, IT’S STUPID! I think I lost count and missed a 1/2 cup somewheres. We will see how well the jellies set and that might let me know. The thing that makes me really think I whoopsed it is that I ended up with 4 half pints plus about 3/8 of an inch in a 5th jar. The recipe said it would make 4 half pints and a quarter pint – and this book is usually spot on the mark with quantities.
Regardless of the renegade sugar, since I had the small amount left I was able to taste the jelly straight away. And it was tasty, refreshing even. I think the rum played a background part and the balance of the mint and lime is really nice. When I make this again I might swap the quantities of water and rum and see what happens (btw, I checked and rum has a ph level considerably lower than water so I didn’t hose anything with the substitution), it might even be possible to leave the water out altogether. But I am not sure that would be a good idea – who knows? After I finished canning I took the leftover jar down to the hubster with a little tasting spoon, he said he liked it. I had to run out the door and pick up my little man from pre-school and when I returned the leftover jar was in the sink with the spoon – empty. Which I will take to imply he wasn’t lying. He ate it all, with a spoon.
For full disclosure – I am not much of a drinker and have never tasted a Mojito. I have no idea if this jelly tastes anything like a Mojito – one of you boozers will have try it and tell me how they compare. So, do you have a favorite cocktail that we could jellyfy?
*Arguably one could say Tequilia, but we do not keep that in the house.
April 23, 2010 at 1:13 am
oh my gosh.. I LOVE this! I love your blog too! Wonderful !!!!
April 23, 2010 at 1:55 am
A great recipe idea and a truly beautiful photo. Looking forward to trying this ASAP.
April 23, 2010 at 3:34 am
I’m really NOT the person that loves alcohol, except for three things: mojito, caipirina and Japanese plum wine. This jelly looks awesome and is on my soon-to-make list now.
April 23, 2010 at 4:29 am
Wow, that looks beautiful. I love mojitos, it’s my fav summer drink! I’ll give this recipe a whirl, but just wanted to know if I can substitute gelatin or agar agar powder for the pectin? Thanks!
April 23, 2010 at 7:57 am
Thank you (thank you all for the kind comments – I am blushing).
I am afraid that you cannot substitute either of those things for the pectin as far as I know. But you might want to poke around the ‘net and see, I have never heard of anyone doing it. Now, if you don’t want to “can” the product but have it as a refrigerator jelly then you might be able to muck about with an alternative jelling agent – but I think you would be making something that was more jell-o than jelly.
April 23, 2010 at 1:38 pm
I don’t really know much about canning, so I might just keep it as refridgerator jelly like you said.
I’ll see if I can find pectin in my local store, otherwise i’ll try it out with agar agar powder and let you know! Thanks!
April 23, 2010 at 5:40 am
This is AMAZING. I’m at university at the moment, in a house of six students, and I have GOT to make mojito jelly. Can you imagine? You’re a genius.
April 23, 2010 at 8:03 am
For your boozers you might want to flip the water/rum ratio like I suggested. You could even substitute a spiced rum if that is how you like your mojitos.
If you make this and tinker with it, please consider coming back with a report and letting us know how it came out.
This goes for all y’all.
Pretty please. 😉
April 23, 2010 at 9:37 am
This is perfect! my mint plant has all but taken over my back yard and this will help me use some of it!
Thanks!
April 23, 2010 at 11:10 am
Limonatayı çok severim!
April 23, 2010 at 9:50 pm
That´s awesome! It´s a great idea. Thumbs up
April 27, 2010 at 8:00 am
What a beautiful picture! I’ll admit, I’ve never even tried a mojito… but it sure makes me want to now! 🙂 Congratulations on a very creative idea for the canjam!
April 28, 2010 at 8:56 am
What do you mean by BWB?
April 28, 2010 at 9:07 am
BWB us generally accepted “canning speak” for Boiling Water Bath. If you check the canning thing it has an explanation of the whole canning process. I try not to put it in every canning post because that would make them crazy boring.
Let me know if you have any more questions!
April 28, 2010 at 10:18 am
yummmmmm
April 28, 2010 at 11:02 am
I was pulling up mint by the handfuls this weekend, I can’t wait to try this!!!!
April 30, 2010 at 10:19 am
Hmmmmm…this really sounds tempting. I made Strawberry Margarita Preserves a couple of years ago that rocked!
This Mojito jelly would be awesome spooned over a fresh fruit salad!
May 3, 2010 at 3:53 pm
[…] Robbing Peter made a stunning Mojito Jelly. I am not totally sure what I would do with it…but I love mojitos and I love mint. And the color of this was incredible. I’m thinking this month might be about color! I can imagine it in layers of a cake or something. Yum. […]
May 3, 2010 at 5:04 pm
What a gorgeous photo!!
May 15, 2010 at 7:14 pm
I made this last weekend – it is great! We loved it! I did reverse the rum and water ratio but it was not too rummy. Thanks for the great idea
May 15, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Excellent! I am glad it turned out well and it is good to know that the ratios can be changed.
Boozy jelly will take over the world!
June 27, 2010 at 5:39 pm
[…] much taken from here, though I didn’t measure the liquid after, and I think I was a little over. Or else I just […]
June 29, 2010 at 7:38 am
Love mojitos, so this is on my list to make in the next couple of days. Thanks for sharing. I think this will be lovely over fruit or spread on a hot sponge cake… YUM!