Quick Summary: Best Ways to Process a Massive Plum Harvest
When your plum tree overproduces and your family is tired of standard plum jam, our community members recommend these practical, time-saving solutions:
- 🍓 Make Fruit Leather (Pastila): Instead of drying whole plums (which takes forever), puree the plums, add sugar to taste, spread on dehydrator trays, and make fruit leather. It dries much faster and is a great healthy snack.
- ❄️ Freeze for Winter Baking: Cut firm, ripe plums in half, remove the pits, and freeze them in bags. They are perfect for dropping straight into winter sponge cakes (like Charlotte) or muffins.
- 🌪️ Skip the Sieve, Use a Blender: If you are making jam or puree, don’t waste time boiling and pushing plums through a sieve to remove skins. Just remove the pits and blend the raw plums (skins included) with an immersion blender. It saves hours of work and prevents the puree from burning on the stove.
- 🍹 Concentrated Compote: Instead of the standard ratio, fill jars heavily with firm plums, add a handful of raspberries or strawberries for aroma, and can a concentrated compote that can be diluted with water later.
- 🍖 Savory Plum Sauce: If you have blue/purple plums, cook them down with garlic and spices to make a savory sauce (like Tkemali) for meats.
Well, let’s talk about a sore subject… This time, about plums! There is just an unreal amount of plums this year. The burning question is what to do with them. No one in our house eats jam. I canned a couple of jars of plum halves in syrup. I put some in the dehydrator. It dries them, but incredibly slowly! And they are ripening en masse!
I read the internet and decided to make marmalade (thick fruit paste). The recipe says to bake plum halves until soft, push them through a sieve to remove the skins, boil the puree first without sugar, then a little more with sugar, then spread it on trays and dry it.
Well, I went out to the plum tree in the morning. There are no plums left at the bottom, and I’m not climbing to the top of the tree! I shook the branches a little. A few fell down. But when I gathered them, it turned out to be a whole basket! Quite a lot, actually! I washed them, pitted them, laid them out on baking sheets, and baked them. At first glance, everything looked fine. I started pushing them through the sieve to remove the skins. And that’s when I realized that homemade marmalade is only for the most stubborn people…
With great difficulty, I managed to push through about 2 kg (4.4 lbs) of puree. The rest, along with the skins, I just ran through a meat grinder on the finest grate. I put the puree on the stove to boil. Before I could even turn around, it started burning at the bottom! Listen, how do people even make plum jam? They manage it somehow!
In short, I have a pot of plum puree on my hands. Moreover, a hard-won plum puree! Did I shake the tree, remove the pits, and push it through a sieve for nothing?! And it is completely unclear what to do with this puree now. I guess I’ll pour it back onto baking sheets and put it in the oven. The dehydrator is currently occupied anyway…
Ruzhana said:
In short, I have a pot of plum puree on my hands. Moreover, a hard-won plum puree! …
In case of a hyper-harvest, you need to buy a chest freezer and freeze everything. I think there will be much more interest in them during the winter.
Ruzhana said:
With great difficulty, I managed to push through about 2 kg of puree… put it on the stove to boil… it started burning at the bottom! Listen, how do people even make plum jam?
Why bother sieving it or putting it through a meat grinder? Just hit them with an immersion blender, and problem solved. Then cover them with sugar in a 1:1 ratio. And put it on the heat. The main thing is to stir it constantly so it doesn’t burn. Once it boils on high heat, switch to low heat and skim the foam off the top (it’s delicious, by the way). 20 minutes, and the jam is ready. Pour it hot into screw-top jars.
I’ll share my experience. A little background: I have white plums (a mislabeled tree from an online store); the pit only separates when they are half-ripe. Once the plum is fully ripe, the flesh becomes jelly-like, and the pit takes the “meat” with it.
Here is how I solved the processing issue: I sent the ripest plums to make jam — 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of plums + 400g (14 oz) of sugar — boil until thick. After cooling, it gels slightly and will be used as pie filling in winter.
The ripe but firm plums went into compotes; I added raspberries or strawberries for aroma — a handful per 3-liter jar. I made the compote concentrated, not like the recipes say where they only fill a third of the jar with fruit.
I froze several bags of pitted plum halves — they will go into Charlotte cakes (apple/plum sponge cakes) in the winter.
I processed 6 buckets of plums this way, and if I had any left, I would have turned them into fruit leather (pastila). It’s simple: puree the pitted plums (by any method) + sugar (a reasonable amount/to taste) — boil it down and put it in the dehydrator. Previously, I also made jams from a mix of summer apples and plums: I put the peeled fruit through a meat grinder, added 300g of sugar per 1 kg of the mix, and boiled it down.
But I wouldn’t dry whole plums — they dry very poorly and take forever. For drying, they use a specific variety (I couldn’t find the name) with a high dry matter content. And if you have blue/purple plums, you can try making a savory meat sauce (like Tkemali) out of them. Or, just barter the plums for something more useful for the household. The main thing to remember: having a lot is better than having too little. We will overcome/defeat this harvest, absolutely.
Ruzhana said:
I started pushing them through the sieve to remove the skins. And that’s when I realized that homemade marmalade is only for the most stubborn people…
If they are soft, it might be easier to peel them first, and then boil/bake them. The skin on yellow plums usually slips off easily. It really does taste different without the skin, and you don’t need as much sugar.
Thanks everyone for the advice!
Yesterday’s story with the plums ended with me loading everything into the dehydrator, and it turned into fruit leather (pastila). It dries much faster than just plum halves. And the taste of fruit leather with skins vs. without skins is definitely different. So, I will freeze a little bit for Charlotte cakes, and the rest will become fruit leather.
