Dandelion jam

Step-by-step cooking

1. Step 1:

   

   First, the dandelion flowers must be properly harvested. You need to collect them in the middle of the day.

2. Step 2:

   

   Pluck only fully opened flowers.

3. Step 3:

   

   But such half-closed ones will not work. It's all about the amount of pollen. In an open dandelion, it is ripe, and in a closed one, it is either over-ripe, or vice versa - not ripe.

4. Step 4:

   

   To prepare one 650 gram jar of dandelion jam, you will need 200 dandelion flowers, 600 grams of sugar, half a liter of water and half a teaspoon of citric acid. This time I was preparing a double norm per liter of water.

5. Step 5:

   

   There are several options for making dandelion jam. The stems of dandelions contain milky juice, which is bitter. To get rid of this bitterness, in most recipes dandelions are soaked for 24 hours. I offer you an option without soaking. We will use only flower petals without stems and sepals. To do this, we cut off the yellow part of the dandelion with scissors.

7. Step 6:

   

   This is how the cut petals of 200 dandelions look. In order to preserve the maximum pollen and, accordingly, the healing properties of dandelion, we will not even wash our future jam. Immediately fill the dandelion petals with water and put them on fire.

8. Step 7:

   

   After boiling, add a very important ingredient - citric acid. It will fix the beautiful yellow color of the jam and will not allow the sugar to crystallize.

9. Step 8:

   

   It takes 30 minutes to boil dandelions, but most importantly - over low heat. Then turn off the fire and let the broth brew for an hour. Already at this stage you will feel a very pleasant aroma of honey.

10. Step 9:

    

    Filter the broth through a double layer of gauze and squeeze the flowers well. Add sugar and put the jam on the fire again. First, you need to constantly stir the jam with a spoon so that the sugar does not burn to the bottom of the pan. When all the sugar has dissolved, the jam can no longer be disturbed. Cook for about 30 more minutes. The longer the jam is cooked, the thicker it will be.

11. Step 10:

    

    We pour the finished jam hot into jars. After cooling, the dandelion jam will thicken, the foam will settle and it will look like bee honey.