Easy Kumquat Jam Recipe

Global Foodies

Four ingredients for toast-spread crack

My mum has a kumquat tree. I’ve known she’s had a kumquat tree for many years now but I’ve never really paid attention to it, other than to notice the little bursts of colour that appear now and then, correlating to extra bat poo underneath.

This year though the tree inspired me for some reason, so I decided to try my hand at making kumquat jam.

An initial internet search for a recipe yielded a few tricky maneuvers required to fix a simple marmalade craving. In the end I pieced-together a recipe that seemed easy enough and worked an absolute treat.

A word of warning: this recipe doesn’t create kumquat jam, but kumquat jam crack.

Literally. This stuff is addictive.

I just started with as many kumquats as I could get my hands on that day, but to make this recipe easily scalable, I’ll stick to an easy 2 cup ratio. Add or subtract sticky, tart kumquats as you need.

Using halved kumquats rather than “finely sliced” or even “quartered” kumquats in other recipes saves a LOT of prep time at the start.

​To get a lovely jammy consistency at the end, I whipped out one of the most underrated kitchen appliances ever invented- the stab mixer.

Serves a small army.

Ingredients:

Method:
1. Halve kumquats, picking out as many seeds as possible at this stage. Place in a pot with 1/2 cup water.

2. Add the sugar and juice and zest of 1/2 lemon.

3. Leave for anywhere between 3 hours — overnight to macerate. See, you still do fancy-sounding things in this recipe, but they’re easy.

4. Use a spoon and fork to squish out the rest of the seeds. I find they float quite easily at this stage.

5. Place on the stove and cook to a boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat to low for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. At this point a thermometer does help to make sure the jam sets, but if you don’t have one it’s still ok. If using a thermometer, the jam needs to reach 120 degrees Celsius.
​
6. Once mixture seems nice and sticky, take off the heat and let cool for a bit.

7. Cheat’s finishing step- take out a stab mixer, or blender or any other kind of blending device and whizz everything up, skin and all.

8. Run (I’m not kidding, RUN) to the bakery, grab some freshly baked bread, slap some butter on it and this top with ridiculously delicious kumquat jam.

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