Ume (Japanese Plum) Jam

Plums from the Sunday Market This is a small jar of jam I made from Japanese plum (Ume) for the first time. I'm not sure if I can call it a success, though. These are not sweet plums. (Sorry, I didn't make it clear in the first place.) Ume plums are sour even after they turn orange and look ripe, and we don't eat them raw. We make umeboshi (pickled Japanese plums) or fruit wine out of them, and for that purpose they don't have to be ripe -- we use them when they are green and immature. It is said that immature Japanese plums contain poisonous substance a little, but being pickled for a long time or being in alcohol for a long time, I guess they become detoxified. Ume Jam and my Hand-Made Label Anyway, when I googled for a Japanese recipe of Ume jam, I found, on almost every site, comments like: "Ume jam is sooooo good! Its refreshing smell and the combination of sweet and sour taste is wonderful! " "Even anyone who doesn't like any kind of fruit jam will love this" etc. etc. Most of recipes said you have to soak immature ume plums in salt water overnight (apx 3 hours for ripe, orange-colored ume), and repeat boil-drain procedure a few times, carefully removing the foam-like dirt that comes out from ume plums while boiling. I thought those were the necessary procedures for removing the strong harshness. Ume Jam on Yogurt Now I'm not quite sure if I did that part of the preparation thoroughly. Because the ume plums I bought this time looked ripe, I soaked them in water for 3 hours and I boiled them once, drained, and boiled again and drained again. When the plums softened, I removed all the seeds. The rest was a straightforward jam-making procedure... boil them in water with sugar (50 to 90% of the weight of the seedless plums, they said). The jam didn't turn out so wonderfully as said in many websites... it was OK, but with a little harshness remaining. Maybe I should have soaked them in water longer and repeated the boil-drain procedure a few more times... Or maybe, instead of boiling it down until thicken by itself, I should have added more water for that amount of plums and use pectin to make the runny jam gel. I guess this time I did a better job making the label than making the jam itself ;P I cropped and resized the photo on top of this entry, gave it some retouch, added the text on it and printed it out. I had fun indeed.