Feijoa Jam Recipe

Making feijoa jam (and other recipes) is often a fiddly and wasteful process involving scooping out the flesh and throwing away the skins so I was intrigued when I saw a recipe that used the whole fruit. I must admit that I remained very sceptical right until the end of the process as I watched the mixture turn from one very unappetising colour to another. But it did eventually turn out to be a deep orange-brown colour that is actually quite appealing.

Although those with feijoa trees are often trying to find ways to use up all the feijoas, this recipe makes a LOT of jam. So make sure you have lots of uses or people to give some away to, otherwise you might want to halve the recipe.

The recipe calls for 2.5kg of feijoas but you will need to allow more if you have very buggy fruit (guava moth caterpillars). While the original recipe said to slice them using a food processor, I cut my fruit in half lengthways and then into several pieces to maximise the chances of being able to remove bugs and blemishes. Then I put the pieces into the food processor and blitzed them until quite small.

2.5kg feijoas
8 cups water
2.5kg sugar

Trim off the blossom end of the feijoas. Process in batches in a food processor to small chunks. I processed further to a coarse purée.

Put into a large preserving pan, add water and gently simmer the fruit until soft. If the pieces are very small then you can simply bring the mixture to a boil.

Add sugar, stirring until dissolved, then turn up the heat and boil briskly until it has turned thick and orange-brown in colour (scooping off any foam from the top). It has reached jam setting stage when a little jam on a cold saucer wrinkles when you push your fingernail against it.*

* The original recipe said start testing for jam setting stage after 20 mins. It took mine 2 hours! 

Ladle the jam into hot sterilised jars and seal.