Unitasker Wednesday: FreshTECH Automatic Jam and Jelly Maker
All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!
Over the years, I’ve come to realize that growing up in my Kansas family wasn’t like growing up in other families in other parts of the country. I regularly wore a bonnet until I was 10 and my grandmother took me on picnics in cemeteries and I learned to shoot a rifle before I started kindergarten. Additionally, I learned how to control field fires and identify snakes. I also learned domestic skills like how to sew and can food and iron and wash laundry in a tub by hand. For reasons unknown, my parents and grandparents wanted my brother and me to know how to survive like farmers who lived a day’s ride from town by horseback. (They also insisted we learn how to live like sea captains on boats, which is especially perplexing since it was land-locked Kansas, but that is a story for another time. Just know I am also really good at tying knots and folding sails.)
Anyway, picking berries from the garden and off bushes that grew on the edge of the timber was an annual event for the women in my family. My grandmother taught me how to know which of the berries were ripe, which were poisonous, and which ones didn’t taste great on their own but were perfectly yummy when made into pies or jam. We’d make a few pies and then use the remainder of the berries for jam, which we would can and eat throughout the year. Most of the specifics about these trades have slipped from my brain and into the ether, but some things I do remember were that the process wasn’t hard, it meant I could hang out with my grandma, and we certainly didn’t have any need for a FreshTECH Automatic Jam and Jelly Maker:
The most obvious way to make jam is to heat berries using a pot on your stovetop. If you don’t want to sit by the range, you can use a slow cooker or even a bread maker (if you happen to have one) or put a pot in a low-degree oven to heat the berries into a sugary mush. If you’re a modernist, you can even use your microwave and have jam in 15 minutes — GASP! A special device just for making jam and jelly honestly seems bizarre to me. Well, bizarre and unnecessary.
I personally struggle with knowing when to adopt new items for convenience and when to stick to the older, traditional method of doing things. When a newer way to do something isn’t any more convenient than an older, traditional way, however, I know adopting something new only for the sake of new isn’t worth the money or cupboard space. These types of objects always, always, always end up being clutter in my home.
Thanks to reader Tia sharing this unitasker with us and I hope you were all at least partially entertained by my walk down memory lane!
19 comments posted
Posted by B - 07/11/2012
This has the potential to be a very interesting item. It says it does its own stirring. I can think of a number of dishes that could potentially be made in something like this such as pilaf, creme anglais, hollendaise sauce, fried onions, etc…
Posted by cassi - 07/11/2012
I use the simplest tools possible mostly because I don’t like to clean appliances. I do have a few appliances but use them only if I’m cooking large amounts like for company.
Posted by chacha1 - 07/11/2012
I’ve never tried to make jam, but from what I’ve read it seems the most challenging part isn’t the actual composition of the stuff; it’s the *canning.*
So until they come up with a little countertop assembly-line device that will not only cook it and stir it, but pour it into the jars, cap and seal them, fuhgeddaboudit.
Posted by Lesley - 07/11/2012
@chacha1, you can also freeze jams and jellies. Much easier! You just have to be sure the quantities are small enough to be consumed in 1-2 weeks once you thaw and use.
Posted by Erin Doland - 07/11/2012
@chacha1 — Lesley is right, jam will keep for a full year in the freezer without the whole traditional canning process. But, to be honest, canning isn’t all that difficult.
Posted by priest's wife (@byzcathwife) - 07/11/2012
I like to cook jam on a double boiler (really a small pot with handles in a large pot with water- I don’t have an official double boiler) to make sure I don’t scorch the jam.
Most of your kitchen unitaskers make me think- who has room for all that extra stuff?
Posted by Beth - 07/11/2012
Wow, not only is that a great unitasker, the “customers who bought this item also bought” bar leads to an abundance of other ones. A basket for lowering jars into boiling water and lifting them out again; ALSO a funny-looking gripper device for doing the same thing! (Tongs always worked for me.) A canning lid submerge-and-sterilize rack that looks like a little tiny dishrack, and also a magnetic wand for picking up loose lids from the bottom of the pot of water! (Tongs also work nicely for that job.) A combination magnetic wand and bubble popper, OR a combination bubble popper and measurer of airspace at the top of the jar! (I guess those aren’t technically unitaskers?) A strawberry stem remover!
Clearly I have been doing canning ALL WRONG.
Posted by JC - 07/11/2012
Although canning really isn’t that difficult, some of those other unitaskers listed by Beth really are helpful depending on what you are canning and in what quantities. When canning small jars of jam/jelly, a set of tongs works just fine. When stacking layers of quart jars full of soup or pie filling and one and a half pint jars of salmon into very large pressure canners, the baskets, racks and canning tongs really do make a difference. Granted, if one is only canning the occasional batch of jam, having these extras around taking up space isn’t practical. When one cans 30-40 red salmon, moose, caribou, jams/jellies, soups, pie fillings and various other items, these little helpers are well worth the cupboard space.
I do agree about the bubble popper, a butter knife slid down the side of the jar works just fine. Simple practice will train the eye to guage the airspace at the top of the jar.
Posted by ninakk - 07/11/2012
As long as jam contains enough sugar, it will be preserved well for a long, long time provided it’s stored in a cold fridge. I make do with boiling the jars and lids first, since I don’t have a dishwasher, and then pour the jam in with the help of my bff, a funnel with large opening. Best invention ever.
Posted by yvette - 07/11/2012
Thanks for that kind of memories! Picking wild blueberries in the woods and in the shade of trees, near fresh brooks in my native Vosges… and helping makes the preserves with fresh green beans we stuffed into old bottles, and sealing them with wax. Having bread and jam for our “4 0-clocks”…
Tears come just at those memories and the people behing them.
As for jam today, this is where the not so perfect fruits end: blemish, half rotten…
Posted by Emily - 07/11/2012
I truly hope a unitasker comes along that warrants the telling of your sea captain education, and soon.
Posted by Jaylynn - 07/12/2012
Okay, I get that the Unitasker post is a joke – but is the biography part a joke too? Did you *really* grow up getting to experience life like Little House on the Prairie?
Posted by Anna - 07/12/2012
@Jaylynn: I believe her. My growing up was like hers in many ways. Not all parts of the country, even in present or recent times, are urban or suburban. Those of us with life skills from an earlier time and some other place will be the ones who survive the longest (I’ll refrain from getting post-apocalyptic here) and we’ll have more fun along the way.
Posted by Erin Doland - 07/12/2012
@Jaylynn — The autobiography part is true. My parents didn’t have some sort of post-apocalyptic intentions like @Anna suggested, though. It was more just so we could spend time on the farms, appreciate their upbringings, and do stuff with grandparents and cousins. The bonnet stuff I think was because Little House on the Prairie was a popular tv show at the time and us little girls wanted to be like Laura. Or Holly Hobbie. Or both.
Posted by Nana - 07/12/2012
My favorite uni-tasker…the wide-mouthed funnel. Used once a year, when I ‘put up’ fruit and pickles. Well worth the storage space.
Posted by Cal - 07/13/2012
I had no idea about freezing jam. Suddenly making lemon marmalade doesn’t sound so daunting! (canning scares me)
Posted by Loren - 07/14/2012
My husband and I started canning about a year ago. We find it to be quite easy, albeit time-consuming. We store our canning accessories (funnel, magnetic lid picker-upper, etc.) in the boiler canner when not in use. The part of canning that scares me is anything that involves a pressure canner, but I don’t plan on canning meats or non-pickled veggies any time soon. I do think the automatic jam and jelly maker is a bit silly, though – we us a Dutch oven to cook up our jams and jellies with no problem.
Posted by Sjr - 07/15/2012
I have never understood the purpose of making jam, jelly or preserves when I can go to a store and buy them. Part of uncluttering, to me, is not spending time doing things that other people already do, and do well. Unless the thing is a hobby and brings intrinsic pleasure.
Posted by JC - 07/16/2012
Sjr: Some people make preserves as a hobby. For others it’s a way of life. As hard as it is to believe, not everyone has ready access to a well stocked grocery, or the financial means to purchase ready made items. Self-sufficiency isn’t just a trend or a political movement. My family has always caught our own fish, hunted most of our meat, and picked and preserved wild berries. We haven’t yet put in a garden at our house, but next year we will have that produce as well. We know where our food is coming from, what it’s made of, and after the initial investment of a canner and jars, the financial cost is minimal compared to purchasing all of our food at a grocery.
Uncluttering is different for everyone. You see preserving as time clutter, others see it as freedom from worry clutter and satisfaction in providing basic good food for oneself and family. Each view is valid.
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