We love oriental food, but when our income plummeted several years ago, our occasional take out treat went from once every few months to "never". During that time, I learned how to make all sorts of our favorite take out foods, including egg rolls, wonton soup, egg drop soup, fried rice, and stir fries. With the increase in our egg roll consumption, we realized we needed to do come up with a way to create plum duck sauce for the egg rolls, since a jar of it cost about $2.69 at the local grocery store.
I was delighted to find a recipe in the Ball Blue Book of Canning, but we were not thrilled with the results.
I was reading the back of a jar of our favorite brand of duck sauce for some inspiration when I realized that our favorite brand had no plums in it--the main flavor was from pineapple juice. The main ingredients were: pineapple juice, sugar, dried onions, dried bell peppers, dried garlic, salt, and pectin. Awesome! I have all of those at home!
For the purposes of this photo tutorial, you will see me using boxed pectin. I normally buy mine in bulk, as it is cheaper, but for the first timer, a box is the way to go, if only to get the handy little chart which one finds in each box. The chart tells you the right proportions of juice, sugar, and pectin for each sort of fruit. I keep mine on the inside of my cabinet door...or rather, I will put it back up there when we put ours back up :-) (ah, remodeling!).
You will also see an insane amount of sugar going into this. Because we are essentially making a jelly with onions in it, the sugar and the pectin work together to thicken things up. If you don't want to use that much sugar, there is no sugar or low sugar pectin which you can buy, which is formulated to work with low sugar recipes. The results are not always perfect, but at least you are not making something with that much sugar.
Before I started any prep work, I filled up my water bath canner in preparation for canning, and brought it to a boil. This way, there would be no waiting. It would be a wise idea to also find all of your other canning paraphernalia, as it is no fun trying to find your jar lifter as your timer is buzzing at you...not that I did that this past time...a'hem.
I began by measuring out a can of pineapple juice. The pineapple juice (and all canned juices) were on sale at the local Spartan, and so I stocked up if for no other reason than to make a year's supply of plum duck sauce. Then, I poured the pineapple juice into a stainless steel pot, and brought it to a boil, with 2T. of dried onions, 2T. red and green peppers (I bought these at the bulk food store), and 1T. of crushed red pepper (the hot stuff--optional if you don't like FIRE). I also added a pinch of garlic powder.
Once the pineapple juice with spices was boiling, I added the pectin, brought it to a boil again, and after a minute I added all of the recommended sugar. For 5.5 cups of pineapple juice the recommended sugar was a whopping 6 cups, which I had standing by. They didn't have pineapple juice on the chart in the box, but I remembered from last time that the amounts were the same as for plums. :-)
I poured my sugar in all at once, and stirred to dissolve it.
I again brought it to a boil, per the directions in the pectin, while I prepared my canning jars. I poured boiling water into my clean sink, and added the canning jars and lids to sterilize them, after checking for any cracks and so forth. Always use new lids (you can reuse the bands).
I filled the jars with 1/4" headspace, and wiped the lip of the jar as well as the lid itself, before putting it on, and screwing on the band.
After I had filled 7 half-pint jars (which is what fits in my canner at once), I poured the rest into a large canning jar for use that day during our dinner, as well as for later use stored in the fridge. If I were making more than just one little batch, I'd have filled as many half-pints as needed.
I canned them in the water bath canner for 5 minutes...or maybe a little bit longer while we scrambled to find the jar lifter which had fallen behind the stove....;) LOL
I lifted the jars out of the canner, and onto a towel I spread out on the counter, setting them about an inch apart.
If you are not familiar with canning...you want to hear them all start to pop either shortly after you lift them out of the boiling water, or within an hour or two. That means the lid is sealing to the jar. After they have cooled, touch the top of the lid to see if it is "down". If it pops down then up again, put that one in the fridge for safety.
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