The boiling water process is very necessary for the safety of jams and jelly. It helps to kill off any bacteria that may be left in a jar, or lid. The lids are never boiled prior to placing on the hot filled jars, so they could carry a possible bad thing if they were not heat treated by the boiling water batch. The amount of sugar and REGULAR pectin is VERY critical and can cause a poor set if the sugar isn't sufficient enough or the pectin isnt enough or is too old. I would suggest using the Pomona pectin as its much more stable, and can give very reliable results without any concern about the sugar. Its especially useful for those who have never made jellies or jams before, and need 100% positive results. The lemon juice mentioned, doesn't state the amount either, so there, you could add enough to taste. With pleanty of added acid like BOTTLED lemon juice or citric acid, the product can usually keep for well over a month in the fridge, once opened. If you have a lot more figs than the 4 cups, you could also make a larger batch with Pomona pectin as it will set with the added calcium as opposed to sugar. LOTS of sugar in a jelly or jam will help keep it from spoiling once its opened and refrigerated. Figs, usuaully have a lot of natural sugar, so they are needing an acid to enhance their flavor as well as safety. The canning jar size would be 8 ounce. I use pints for my stuff when using Pomona and have put up about 15 pints of jelly using a whole box of the Pomona pectin. I use a 10 minute BWB for pints. Fig jam is quite simple, and you have found a decent and basic recipe. For me, it would be some fig squares I would make from my brown turkey figs. This year, all my figs were lost due to my long stay in the hospital, and the tree getting too dry in its big pot.

Allrighty, here is the update on my fig experiments, posted direct from my laBORatree :). 1) 8 hours in the slowcooker. Have you ever tried to carmelize onions in the slowcooker? IME, they turn a creepily-even shade of brown, but do not taste carmelized. The figs turned that same even shade, and somehow developed a bitter aftertaste. Not burnt, just bitter. Might be edible with some intense other flavors, but I will probably compost them. 2) 90 minutes or 2 hours in the oven, 2 inches deep in the pan, about 400 degrees (I am forgetting the details). I had to cover them with tinfoil to prevent burning. They are tasty but not carmelized. 3) Modified Not-Martha method. I skipped all the fancy stuff, and just dumped the figs in the frying pan and sprinkled a good dose of sugar on them, and stirred/flipped them often. Then deglazed the pan with lemon juice. This last method is the way to go! Thank you Dave! I did the baked ones, first. They had lost all their juice when baking, but were still moist (just not loads of juice like raw figs have when you heat them). More juice came out as they 'fried' in the sugar, and the result was great. The raw ones were a bit more tricky. Their juice took a while to come out, and meanwhile I had to be careful not to burn the sugar. Medium heat and frequent stirring worked fine for the first batch. The second batch of raw figs, the sugar really got dark. I dumped in a bunch of lemon juice, and poured out the resulting liquid (into my holding pan for cooked figs). Still a problem, and I didn't want to add more lemon to my final result, so I put in a few tablespoons of water, and dumped again. That worked. I now have a (holding) pan of delicious, and very lemony, carmelized fig jam-like glop. Yay! I will reheat and adjust seasonings, and maybe can it, later. I say maybe because I started with abut 5 pounds of figs and ended up with what looks like about a half pint of jam. The figs lost a lot of water! Almost as much as when I carmelize them by roasting in a single cut-and-splayed-out layer. So, they may just go in the fridge :). Anyway, I heartily recommend this to anyone who has way too many figs. Easy, and delicious. And compact ;).

I can see that orange liqueur would be a good substitute for Port. When I had fig trees in Venice, I would always add orange juice to the fig jam, in addition to the lemons. I would add lemon rinds to the pot and remove them before finishing the jam. I added orange juice because my orange tree there always had oranges - unlike the one I have now. I was lucky that I had ripe lemons when the figs were ripe as well. The figs I had were called "Texas Red" (not an official name), and they were the sweetest I have ever had - quite a bit sweeter than the black Mission figs that are common in California. I had the trees shipped in from Texas and never saw them anywhere else, and now I no longer have them. I really do not have room for a fig tree any more. The bad thing was that when I was getting 60+ figs a day, the weather was very hot, and I did not have air conditioning (to speak of) in Venice, and so the kitchen would get too hot while I was trying to make the jam. Now I have central A/C but no fig trees :(. Fresh figs are probably my favorite fruit, and I do miss having them. I used to send most of the preserves I made to my father, who also had fig trees but no one to make the preserves for him. These days I have to content myself with fig preserves that I buy.

I do have fig recipes that do not call for blanching, but I agree that the most current official approved recipes, like those from the National Center for Home Food Preservation do have a blanching step in the process. I am going to assume that the blanching relates to one or more of these things: 1) Some figs (I am not sure if all varieties do) have a natural waxy coating that blanching might remove. 2) Figs are not, technically speaking, a fruit. They are a synconium, a form of a hollow pod lined with hundreds of tiny flowers. In order for pollination to ocur, insects must enter the tiny opening at the end of the synconium. Colloquially, this opening is often referred to as an eye, and I know that some fig varieties have a more open eye and some have a closed eye. Often, ants will take advantage of the tiny opening and crawl inside it and feed on the figs. So will some other small pests. So, I'm wondering if maybe the brief period of blanching is intended to drive out ants or any other tiny insects that might have craweled inside the eye? Figs are a huge family, and not all of them require pollination and some only need it for the second crop, but not the breba (first) crop. Some recipes call for a brief blanching period, a few call for a loner soak in water that then is discarded. I am not sure what the difference is, but maybe it relates to the finished product. 3) And, there's also the possibility that since figs must ripen fully on the tree since they do not continue to ripen after being harvested, that blanching is needed for the same purpose it is used with other fruits and veggies (generally pre-freezing or pre-drying) to halt the ripening enzymes from continuing to darken or soften the food (though I do not know why the BWB process wouldn't accomplish the same thing). If you want an answer from a canning expert, which I am not, you can post this question over at the Harvest Forum here at Garden Web. That's where the canning experts hang out.