Plum and chilli jam

Not necessarily for use on your toast, although there's nothing to say you shouldn't!

The original recipe I found for this included arrowroot as the thickening ingredient. Not being able to source any arrowroot in my local shops, and having bought a bag of cheap plums off the market, I decided to make my own adaptation of the recipe by adding plums and doubling the amount of sugar. The resulting jam is not scarily sweet as you might imagine, the chillies give it a nice edge.

Plum & chilli jam

1lb/450g plums, halved and stoned
8 birds eye chillies
2 cloves garlic
2" root ginger
400g sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp fish sauce (can be left out for veggies, although I think it gives the jam its edge)
220ml cider vinegar

(I also added about 50ml of water but I think it would be better without it as my jam is still slightly loose; the water from the plums should give you enough liquid along with the cider vinegar)


Chop the chillies, deseeded if you wish (I left seeds in four, and deseeded four). Peel and grate the ginger, and peel and crush the garlic cloves.

Put everything except the sugar into a saucepan and cook until the plums begin to fall apart. Fish out the plum skins as they come away from the flesh.

Add the sugar and bring to a rolling boil for as long as it takes to reach setting point. To work this out, put a saucer in the fridge to chill and then when the jam starts to thicken, take the saucer out of the fridge and drip a small amount of jam onto it. After a short while you will see it start to set (or if not, continue boiling the jam).

Decant into sterilised jars (5 mins in the oven at gas 2).