The birthplace of walnuts - middle Asia. It was from there that a variety of dishes made from these fruits came to us, including jam.

It is tasty, original and healthy. Few people know how to make jam from green walnuts and what fruits are needed for this dessert. From the article you will learn new recipes and culinary tips.

Green walnut jam: beneficial properties

Every human body needs vitamins, iodine and other biological substances. All this is in the walnut. It is good for blood vessels, heart, immune system etc. Walnut fruits contain a large amount of vitamin C. This is why doctors recommend eating nuts in winter.

Considering beneficial features fruit, many housewives make delicious jam from it. It strengthens the immune system, helps restore normal sleep, cure a sore throat or flu.

Schoolchildren need nut jam. Thanks to it, mental activity increases, strengthens the immune system, and promotes recovery after a long illness.

Healers who only recognize traditional medicine, they believe that nut jam helps cure gout, rheumatism, stomatitis, kidneys, heart and many others. etc. However, this dessert is not only healthy, but also very tasty. Even children will enjoy using it.

Fruit preparation

Not everyone knows when to collect green walnuts for jam. As a rule, the fruits appear in June, so the harvest can be harvested at the end of the month. At this time they are still green and unripe, which is what is needed for dessert.

To make jam, you need to collect strong and large green nuts. Try to collect as many of them as possible. Green walnuts have a soft shell, but the kernels have already appeared.

Try to collect nuts far from the road, preferably in a planting or forest. After all, to make jam we need fruits that are not only tasty, but also healthy. If you collect them near the roadway, then there will be very few useful substances in the nuts.

Classic nut jam recipe

This dessert is quite simple to prepare, but the process is lengthy. When you prepare it, appreciate the time spent. Nuts taste very bitter and unpleasant. Therefore, they need to be soaked for a long time. Only then will you get rid of bitterness.

First, use a fork, knife or needle to poke many holes in the nuts. This is necessary so that the bitterness comes out as quickly as possible. Pour cold salted water over the nuts. Let them stand for 9 days. Change and salt the water every morning. On the tenth day, prepare the ingredients:

• Sugar - 1 kg 350 g.
• Nuts - 50 pcs.
• Water - 3 tbsp.
• Ground cinnamon - 20 g.
• Cardamom grains - 14 pcs.
• Cloves - 7 g.

After the nuts have steeped, rinse them thoroughly, add fresh water and place over medium heat. When the fruits boil, reduce the heat and cook for another 15 minutes. Now drain the boiling water, rinse the nuts and leave them in cold water to cool completely.

Meanwhile, make syrup. Mix sugar and water and boil for 5 minutes. Now place the cooled nuts in the syrup and boil for another 15 minutes. Now you can remove the container from the stove and leave it for a day.

Prepare a gauze bag, put cloves and cardamom in it. Dip it on a string into the nuts, add cinnamon to the mixture itself and cook for 7 minutes. Remove the gauze bag and roll up the hot jam. It turns out very tasty jam from green walnuts. The recipe came to us from Asia and is still in demand.

Armenian nut jam

This dessert has a sweet and sour taste. To make nut jam you will need the following ingredients:

• Sugar - 1 kg 350 g.
• Unripe walnuts - 1 kg.
• Medium lemon - 2 pcs.
• Carnation - 13 buds.
• Water - 300 ml.

Prepare the syrup: boil sugar and water for about five minutes. Cool it and put the fruits in it, add lemon juice to the same container.

When the mixture boils, boil for 10 minutes and set aside. The jam should sit for a day. Now repeat this procedure 2 more times. In total, the jam was cooked for 10 minutes each day for three days. On the fourth day, cook until the nut is completely soft and ready. Roll up.

Green walnut jam in chocolate

This is a rather unusual delicacy. And probably not everyone knows how to make jam from green walnuts with chocolate. It turned out that there is nothing complicated in the recipe. The main thing is to adhere to the desired proportion. To make jam you will need:

• Sugar - 1 kg 200 g.
• Green walnuts - 1 kg.
• Water - 300 g.
• Cocoa - small pack (100 g).
• Spices.

First, the fruits must be cooked for about two hours. Then boil the syrup needed for jam. Place nuts in it and cook for two hours. Meanwhile, dilute the cocoa in a small amount of water and break up any lumps that appear. When the jam is almost cooked, there are 10 minutes left until the end, pour cocoa into it and add the necessary spices. This can be ginger root, cinnamon, clove buds and many others. etc.

Remember: cocoa gives the syrup thickness. So don't overdo it. If you want thicker jam, add all 100 g of cocoa. If you want a more liquid dessert, then 50 g will be enough for you. You will get both tasty and healthy jam from green walnuts. You can try your own recipe. Experiment with spices and see how you can play with flavors.

It is impossible to wash your hands after cleaning nuts. The color of the fruit eats deep into the skin, and you have to walk with such hands for at least a week.

To avoid this nuisance, remember to wear gloves when cutting nuts. Do you want to keep your manicure? Then cut the fruits with a knife, not your fingernails.

For a more pleasant and unusual taste, play with spices and citrus fruits as often as possible. Experiment with lemon, oranges, tangerines, ginger, zest, etc. Only then will you find your unforgettable recipe.

To make the jam tasty, aromatic and original, always cook it in three or four batches. The dessert turns out thicker when, after the next cooking, you let it cool completely. Try not to put it on the stove even when it’s warm.

To make the jam last a long time, add 5 grams of sugar to each jar before closing. And for more long-term storage try to put the jam in a dark and cool place.

Walnut jam is cooked at the time when they reach milky ripeness:

their cover is soft and their kernels are jelly-like.

100 pieces of green nuts
2 kg and 250 g sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
10 pieces. carnations
vanilla

Peel the unripe nuts from the green crust (using rubber gloves so as not to paint your hands black).

We choose nuts - when cut, they should have 3 shades of color.

For 5 liters of water we take 500 g baking soda. Soak the peeled nuts in the solution for 3-4 hours. Rinse well. Pour in enough water to cover the nuts, bring to a boil, and rinse again. Fill with water again, add 250 g of sugar, boil again for 30 minutes, drain. Next, pour 8 glasses of water into a basin, add 2 kg of sugar, let it boil and lay out the nuts. Add cloves and cinnamon, cook until tender. When evaporating, add water. This takes 7-9 hours, the finished nuts become black and shiny, as if covered with varnish. Add vanilla at the end.

Walnut jam (option 2)

The nuts are peeled from the top green crust and soaked for two days in cold water, changing it 3-4 times a day. Then, after draining the water, pour lime water over the nuts for a day, stirring them periodically. Lime water is prepared as follows: 1/2 kg of slaked lime is poured into 5 liters of cold water, stirred and allowed to brew for 3-4 hours, then the solution is poured into another container and filtered through cheesecloth. Afterwards they are washed with cold water, piercing each nut in several places with a fork and soaked again in cold water for two days. Then the water is drained, the nuts are dipped in boiling water, boiled for 10 minutes and drained in a colander.
Prepare the syrup, bring to a boil, add walnuts, cloves, and the juice of one lemon, boil for 2 - 3 minutes and leave for 6 - 8 hours. After this, the jam is brought to a boil again, this is repeated 3 times, after which it is boiled until tender, and then rolled up.

Green walnut jam (option 3)

For 100 pcs. small walnuts -

250 gr. sugar, 1 l. water (for the first syrup);

1 kg. Sahara,

1 l. water,

1 teaspoon of citric acid solution (for the second syrup).

Walnut jam is cooked at the time when they reach milky ripeness: their cover is soft and the kernels are jelly-like. These nuts are very bitter, so we soak them in cold water for about a month, adding water periodically. Then peel off the crust, wash and soak in diluted lime water (1 tablespoon of slaked lime per 1 liter) for one night. But in order for the bitterness to completely disappear, we boil them in two or three waters, cooling after each cooking and then cutting into halves.
After this, cook the jam in the first syrup for 2-3 hours and drain the syrup. Then place the nuts in the second syrup and cook until tender. A few minutes before the end of cooking, add a solution of citric acid. Leave green walnut jam, which is rightfully considered the “king of jam,” for another couple of hours to let it cool, and pour it into jars.

Walnut jam

Approximate cooking time: 180 minutes

Ingredients used in the recipe:
for 100 pcs walnuts

500g lime
1 tbsp alum
2 kg and 1 glass of sugar
spices to taste: cinnamon, ground cloves, cardamom, vanillin. I added cinnamon and cloves.
a lot of water)))

Cooking Instructions:

I certainly didn't have to fuss with them that much. At our market, grandmothers sell semi-finished products. Those. You no longer have to do all the dirty work.

Peel milky ripe walnuts from the top green crust covering them. Their cover is soft and their kernels are jelly-like. Soak for 2 days in cold water, changing it three to four times a day.

Prepare lime water: pour 5 liters of cold water over the lime, stir, let it sit for 3-4 hours. After this, drain the clear water formed on the surface of the settled lime and strain through cheesecloth.
Pour this water over the nuts overnight.

After this, rinse the nuts with cold water and pierce each nut in several places with a fork. And again soak in cold water (from this point I started working on them) for 5 hours to 2 days, changing the water just as often.

Dilute alum in hot water and pour it over the nuts, leave for half an hour.
Drain the water. Pour boiling water over and leave for another half an hour.
Then pour boiling water again and quickly drain it.

Then prepare a weak syrup. For 2 liters of water, a glass of sugar. Pour over the nuts and leave for another half an hour. Drain it. Rinse the nuts under running water.

And now prepare the final syrup. For 500 grams of water 2 kg of sugar. Dip the nuts into it, if the syrup does not cover the nuts, you can add boiling water and cook until tender: let it boil and cook for 5-10 minutes, turn it off and leave for 8-12 hours. Repeat this 3 times. At the end of the last cooking, add spices.

Transfer the nuts into clean, dry jars, pour in syrup, and close with lids.

For this amount I got three 700g jars.

Or you can let it cool and consume.

Note:
They drink tea with this jam during epidemics of colds, and not only.

In addition, they can surprise guests.

The process of making jam is of course labor-intensive, but believe me, it’s worth it.

A lot has been written about the benefits of walnuts, I will repeat some points.
By nutritional value the rating of walnut kernels is one of the highest among other food products plant origin. In terms of protein content, nuts are superior to all grain crops, second only to legumes
Green walnuts improve immunity, cleanse the blood, and saturate the body with vitamins and microelements.
Walnut kernels contain protein, sugar, drying fatty oil, provitamin A, vitamins C, E, P, K, group B, minerals (iron, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, calcium, cobalt, iodine, copper), tannins .

***

Cooking method: how to make walnut jam.

This culinary recipe will require you to mobilize all your mental strength. Lazy housewives may not even read. Because the best nut jam is made when you collect the nuts yourself, and carry out every operation yourself, so that in the end you get an incomparable food - nectar and ambrosia.

Unripe nuts should be harvested while the skins are still soft enough. They stiffened a little - and that’s all, good news. As soon as you have collected the required amount, you should immediately begin cleaning them. The knife you use to peel carrots is quite suitable for peeling. The skin comes off quite easily, but be careful with your hands. It's best to wear rubber gloves, although they will leak some of the stuff and may turn your fingers brown. After cleaning, soak the nuts in cold water for 6 days. We change the water three to four times a day. Then we drain this water and fill the nuts with another - lime water. And we stand in it for another day.

Lime water is made like this: pour 0.5 kg of quicklime with five liters of cold water. Be sure to strain.

After lime, we wash the nuts very thoroughly (by this time they become completely black) and prick them with a fork in two or three places. Then we wash it again and put it in boiling water with the addition of alum. 75 gr. alum for the same five liters of water. Cook for 10 minutes, then set aside and place in a bowl of cold water for an hour. Preliminary preparations are complete.

Cook the syrup. Mix sugar with three glasses of water, add cinnamon, cloves and cardamom in a gauze bag. Bring to a boil. Pour the syrup over the nuts and boil for a few minutes. Then remove from heat and leave for a day. We do this three times. Then cook until done. And don't forget to remove the cardamom pouch.

Known since ancient times, the benefits of eating nuts were first noticed by the legionnaires of Alexander the Great during his military wanderings in Asia. Walnut kernels are consumed raw and treated with nut oil and shell decoction. Green walnut jam is of great benefit in the treatment of a number of diseases. This article contains everything about the beneficial qualities and harms of green nuts, cooking recipes with step-by-step photos.

Walnut fruits contain a number of nutrients and vitamins that have a beneficial effect on the human body and help maintain health. Rich set of vitamins C; RR; IN; vital acids; a number of useful minerals that improve the functioning of the body and appearance. The phytoncides contained in nuts guarantee protection against pathological bacteria.

Nuts suitable for jam

Unripe nuts have an unpleasant taste, they are bitter and are not recommended for consumption raw. Jam made from green walnuts is not only tasty, but also a healthy delicacy that can treat many diseases. It is useful to use for persistent insomnia; migraine; headaches in weather-dependent people; stress; depression; pregnancy complicated by iodine deficiency; childhood rickets; overstrain of the body and persistent physical fatigue.

Particular care should be taken when consuming green nut jam if you have diabetes mellitus, peptic ulcers of the gastrointestinal tract, or allergic manifestations; obesity.

Technology for making jam from unripe nuts

Preparing nuts for making jam takes a lot of time and requires special care. Nuts are selected at milky ripeness, when the shell has not yet begun to harden. You can check ripeness with a regular puncture using wooden skewers or toothpicks. If a wooden skewer easily penetrates the skin of an unripe nut, plunging deep into the pulp, such a nut is suitable for making jam.

The nuts are carefully sorted by size - only fruits of the same size are suitable for jam.

Advice! It is worth choosing whole fruits without damage; There should be no dark or rotten spots on the skin. Typically, in the milky ripeness phase, nuts are collected from trees in June or early July.

The utensils for cooking jam are of great importance - you should choose pans with a heavy, thick bottom from of stainless steel; in extreme cases, enamel cookware will do. Containers made of copper or aluminum are absolutely not suitable for making jam. In copper basins, when cooking jam, vitamin C is destroyed, aluminum containers are destroyed by exposure to excess acid.

When cooking, jam should be stirred with a glass or wooden spoon to avoid burning.

Advice! Preparing nuts before making jam takes a lot of time, this operation should be carried out with special care - from proper preparation fruit depends healing power jam.

How to properly make jam from green walnut fruits: methods and options

There are only 2 known methods of making jam, which differ in appearance:

• Jam made from fruits with peel is similar to buckwheat honey - it has a thick dark color. To prepare this jam, the fruits are not freed from the green outer skin, which adheres tightly to the unripe kernel.
• The composition of peeled nuts ultimately has a light color - this is the so-called “white jam”. In this case, the outer green skin is removed from the nuts.

When peeling nuts from the top shell, you must use rubber gloves; the pigment contained in the skins can strongly stain the skin of your hands black.

There are many recipes for making green walnut jam, which are often added with spices, citrus fruits or summer berries.

In this article we will look at detailed recipe Armenian culinary specialists.

Armenian walnut jam

A special feature of this jam is that it is necessary to add lemons or citric acid to the mixture when cooking. Lemon zest gives the jam an unusual taste, and adding lemon significantly increases the content. ascorbic acid in the finished product.

What you need for jam:

• Prepared walnuts (peeled from green skins) - about 1.5 kg.
• Granulated sugar – from 2 to 2.2 kg.
• Ordinary water – 0.5 liters.
• Fresh, medium-sized lemons – 2 pcs.
• Spices: cloves – 5 pieces; cinnamon 1-2 sticks.

Sugar syrup is boiled from water and sugar, stirring the mixture thoroughly until the sugar grains are completely dissolved and boil. After boiling, nuts prepared in advance are added to the mass. Squeeze the juice of 2 lemons into the pan. Spices are wrapped in gauze or a special gauze bag is sewn for spices, then they are placed in boiling jam.

You need to wait for the jam to boil and turn off the mixture, which should be left for about 6 hours. The process of heating the container with jam is repeated 3 times. The finished jam is poured into dry, clean jars, sealed with clean plastic lids or rolled up.

Jars of ready-made jam from green walnuts without shells are perfectly preserved in a dark and cool place (no higher than 25 degrees).

Green walnut jam: video

Botanical Latin name walnut Juglans regia literally translates as “royal acorn of Jupiter.” Such a big name is fully justified by the benefits contained in both the ripe and green fruits of this tree, so it is not surprising that walnut jam is considered “royal” among other preparations. Next, you will learn about the benefits, composition and calorie content of this unusual delicacy, and also get acquainted with the subtleties and secrets of its preparation.

Walnut fruits are special because they change their chemical composition as it matures. For example, vitamin C is found in abundance in green fruits and is completely absent in ripe ones, which is why the composition of walnut jam differs from the composition of dried kernels.

This delicacy is rich in:

• amino acids (histidine, valine, glutamine, cystine, serine, asparagine, phenylalanine);
• vitamins (B, C, A, E, K, PP and F);
• and its mineral composition is represented by the following elements: calcium, magnesium, iodine, potassium, zinc, iron, phosphorus.

Walnut jam is quite a high-calorie product. Depending on the chosen recipe, the calorie content of the delicacy can range from 248 to 433 kcal/100 g, so in any case you should not abuse it.

What are the benefits of an unusual delicacy?

According to one study by UK scientists, walnut jam can prevent the development of breast and prostate cancer. But still, the main benefits of jam are due to the high content of iodine, as well as vitamins E and C.

Thanks to these substances, this product allows you to:

• cope with diseases caused by iodine deficiency;
• it is easier to endure heavy physical activity;
• improve blood circulation in the vessels of the brain;
• remove waste, toxins and free radicals;
• improve the quality of blood and lymph;
• increase the body's resistance to colds and infectious diseases.

Along with the enormous benefits, there are still some contraindications in which you should refrain from consuming nut jam. This is an allergy to Walnut and excess iodine in the body.

Basic rules and secrets of making jam

The taste of this winter preparation (as well as others) largely depends on the quality of the selected raw materials.

Only nuts of a certain degree of maturity, which is usually achieved in the second half of June - early July, are suitable for such jam.

And this degree of ripeness is called milky-waxy, when a delicate shell of milky color and waxy softness is hidden under the green peel. These nuts are usually only slightly larger than an olive.

A simple test will help determine whether nuts are suitable for jam. You need to take one green nut and try to pierce it through with a toothpick. If you can do this without much effort, then you have the ideal raw material for future harvesting.

Additionally, it would not be superfluous to make sure that there are no dark spots and other various defects on the fruits. Nuts should be selected as smooth and of the same size as possible.

Since green fruits have a strong bitterness, before making jam, the procedure of soaking them in lime water is mandatory.

It happens as follows:

1. For 7–10 days, green nuts are soaked in water, and to prevent it from souring, it is changed 3–4 times a day.
2. Then lime water is prepared. 200 g of slaked lime are poured into 3 liters of water, stirred, left for half an hour and filtered through gauze.
3. Pour this water over the nuts for 12 hours until it completely covers them, and stir from time to time.
4. Then the fruits are thoroughly washed under running water, pierced in several places with a fork and boiled for half an hour after boiling in a solution of alum (15 g per 1 liter of water) to remove any remaining lime.
5. Walnuts, washed again after this, are ready to be used for making jam.

Collecting green walnuts and preparing them for further preservation is best done with rubber gloves so as not to end up with hands stained brown for several weeks.

Classic green walnut jam

The classic green nut jam contains only the fruit itself, sugar and water. If you do not take into account the preliminary soaking, the cooking process differs from the usual only in that after a preliminary five-minute boiling, the water must be drained.

Ingredient proportions:

• 1400 g of young nuts;
• 1000 ml water for syrup;
• 600 g granulated sugar.

Classic jam recipe step by step:

1. Soak unripe walnuts in lime mortar. Then rinse them thoroughly, put them in a pan of suitable capacity and put them on the fire.
2. After boiling, boil the nuts for five minutes and remove from heat. Let them brew for 2 - 3 hours, drain the water. Fill the raw material with fresh water and repeat the procedure with five minutes of boiling and tincture.
3. Pour sugar into a dry, clean saucepan, add water and bring the syrup to a boil. After the second boiling, remove the nuts with a slotted spoon and transfer them to the syrup.
4. Next, cook the jam for 2.5 - 3 hours, without changing the intensity of the heat.

To store, seal the nut treats in clean glass jars.

Armenian cooking recipe

Walnut jam in Armenian is also called “black”, since this is the color the green fruits acquire after soaking in a lime solution and cooking in syrup with spices.

For one serving of exotic delicacy you need to take:

• 500 g green walnuts (about 100 pcs.);
• 2000 g sugar;
• 2000 ml water;
• 10 pieces. carnations;
• 5 cardamom grains;
• 5 g cinnamon;
• 2.5 g citric acid.

Progress:

1. Boil the prepared nuts for half an hour. Then drain in a colander and cool quickly in cold water.
2. Place the water and sugar on the fire and bring to a boil, stirring constantly so that the syrup does not burn.
3. Make a bag from folded gauze in several layers and put all the spices into it.
4. Place the cooled nuts and a bag of spices into the hot syrup. Cook the jam over medium heat for 4 - 5 hours, then let the mixture cool completely.
5. Boil the jam a second time until the syrup becomes thick and does not spread on a cold saucer. At the end of cooking, remove the bag of spices and add citric acid.

Seal the hot jam into sterile glass jars and seal with iron lids.

Italian dessert with chocolate

The recipe for this jam is often found in Italian cookbooks, but Italians are surprised by this preparation, since the length of time it takes to prepare nuts completely discourages many housewives from preparing it.

If soaking walnuts for two weeks doesn't bother you, you can make a delicious chocolate-flavored Italian treat that requires:

• 1000 g of walnuts soaked and boiled in alum;
• 1000 g sugar;
• 300 ml water;
• 100 g cocoa powder.

Cooking technology:

1. Make syrup from water and sugar. Immerse the prepared nuts in the boiling sweet mixture and cook them for an hour and a half over medium heat.
2. A quarter of an hour before the end of cooking, add cocoa powder and optional spices (ginger, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom or red hot pepper).

The full taste of the jam will be revealed only after several weeks of aging, so it is better to postpone tasting and roll the delicacy into prepared jars for now. For the same reason, you should not overdo it with spices.

Young walnut jam

There are two types of jam from young walnuts: black (the nuts are boiled together with the green peel) and white (from peeled fruits). Since the main bitterness is concentrated in the peel, white jam does not require soaking the raw materials for a long time.

To prepare such a preparation from young walnuts, you need to take:

• 1000 g of young green nuts;
• 1400 g granulated sugar;
• 400 ml water.

Cooking method:

1. Wearing rubber gloves, cut off the green skin from young nuts to expose the incompletely formed shell. Soak the peeled fruits for a day in cold water, changing it 3-4 times.
2. Boil syrup from water and 700 g of granulated sugar. Place the soaked nuts into it and cook for a quarter of an hour after the syrup boils again. Then remove the jam from the heat and cool completely.
3. Pour the remaining sugar into the cooled delicacy and then cook the preparation until completely cooked (a drop of syrup should retain its shape on a cold saucer).

How to cook without lime

Many housewives are afraid of soaking nuts in lime, which is why an alternative to this preparation using baking soda was born.

For about three liters of finished jam you need to take:

• 100 pieces. green walnuts;
• 250 g baking soda;
• 2000 g sugar;
• 800 ml water;
• 1 lemon.

Preparation:

1. Using a potato peeler, thinly trim the green skins from the nuts. Place the fruits in a pan of suitable capacity and soak in water for two days, changing it at least four times a day.
2. On the third day, drain the water, add baking soda to the nuts and stir. Leave the fruits alone for a day, stirring them occasionally.
3. After baking soda, rinse the raw materials well under running water and prick each nut with a fork in several places. Repeat the two-day soaking with frequent changes of water.
4. Blanch the prepared nuts in boiling water three times. To do this, you need to boil water, immerse the fruits in it for three minutes, then drain the water and repeat everything.
5. Place the nuts in a boiling syrup of water and sugar, let them simmer for five minutes and cool the jam. Repeat the procedure twice more. For the third time, add sliced ​​lemon to the jam. After boiling for five minutes with lemon, the jam can be put into jars.

Nut jam with citric acid

Another version of nut jam without using lime is prepared with citric acid. Of course, in this case, preparing the exotic delicacy will take more than one week, but the result is worth it.

Proportions of ingredients for preparation with “lemon”:

• 40 green walnuts;
• 600 g sugar;
• 2000 ml of water for boiling (1750 ml) and syrup (250 ml);
• 5 g citric acid;
• 10 – 15 clove buds;
• 1 cinnamon stick.

Sequence of actions:

1. First soak the nuts for two days in cold water, changing it every 6 hours.
2. After this, make several punctures in each fruit with a toothpick (fork or wooden skewer).
3. Then soak the raw nuts for another 11 days, changing the water just as often. Each time it will turn brown - this is how bitterness comes out.
4. Now the nuts should be peeled and immersed in an aqueous solution of citric acid for a day. Then boil the raw material in it for 20 minutes and again keep it in this solution for another day.
5. After a day, drain the liquid from the nuts, rinse them thoroughly and place them in boiling syrup along with spices. After boiling for ten minutes, leave the fruits in the syrup for a day so that they are saturated with spicy sweetness.
6. All that remains is to boil the jam for another half hour and place it in prepared sterile jars. Now we roll them up with lids and wrap them until they cool completely.

An exotic delicacy made from such familiar walnuts requires lengthy preparation and certain labor costs. But the result, believe me, is worth it!

I made the jam I’m going to talk about last year.
I hasten to tell you about it, because the time has come to collect the fruits for this jam.
And before that, a story about nut liqueur, freebies and a ladder...

Every year, Felice, my husband’s cousin, gives him a bottle of homemade Nocino nut liqueur on his name day.
Nocino is one of the unforgettable Italian delicacies. A few years ago I saw an International Coffee Competition, where coffee with the addition of Nocino won.
We “persuad” our Nocino with ice cream very quickly.
Two years ago I decided that I could make Nocino myself, so as not to wait for a gift, but to use my own. Fortunately, along the river where we are walking, several huge walnut trees grow.
In search of recipes, I studied all possible literature. There were tons of recipes. But I chose, as it seemed to me, the most reliable one, from the “Encyclopedia of Italian Cuisine.” This is not a tattered notebook with Aunt Moti’s recipes, but a publication!
The publication advised going “nuts” on the day of San Giovanni, that is, June 24.
The day before, my husband and I went to scout those trees to check the presence of nuts and their availability. We decided that the next day we would go somewhere after ten in the morning, when everyone riding their bicycles to work had already passed; all those running for health have already run; all dog owners have already peed and pooped their pets, i.e. no one can blame us for poking public nuts.
We also decided to take a ladder with us to make it easier to collect nuts from high branches.
Now I suggest you remember the plot from the film “Old Robbers”, in which Evstigneev and Nikulin go to steal a painting in a museum, in dressing gowns and with a ladder under their arms. We dressed in the same way in dressing gowns (so as not to get dirty!) and trudged around the city with a ladder under our arms. My man walked and shook, as if the police would stop us. I was dying of laughter, looking at our equipment.
Lord, how I later jumped on those trees, collecting those nuts! Pure monkey...
We picked a huge bag of these nuts. We barely managed to drag that bag and ladder home. The poor husband was shaking even more.
We weighed the nuts at home. It turned out to be 11 kg. And then... Suddenly it turned out that for 2 liters of pure alcohol you need about 700-800 grams of these nuts. And we have 11 kg of them. Throwing away?
And we felt so sorry for these nuts, that, they say, they could live and live, but now they will go into the trash... That we decided to put them all into Nocino liqueur. We even decided that we would give everyone some liqueur for Christmas...
The husband rushed to the supermarket to buy alcohol. But how much alcohol can a regular supermarket in the center of Italy stock? Long story short, he only brought home 8 liters.
And then I remembered about walnut jam. But the Internet quickly disappointed me: “It’s too late to rush around, girl! For jam, you need to collect nuts of milky ripeness, that is, in early June, when they can be easily pierced with a wooden toothpick.” It was the end of June...

I specially photographed the milky ripeness of the walnuts, but at that time they were already woody, i.e. the outer shell of the fruit was still quite soft, namely the shell of the future nut, which is located under the outer shell, had already hardened. Alas...

Thus began our misfortunes with those nuts. We poured 8 liters of alcohol into the corresponding number of nuts in a huge bottle. Then all summer I had a headache, trying to remember to shake that bottle. After the period specified in the recipe, it was filtered, mixed with syrup based on dry red wine and left to infuse. The result was a terrible, sweet, sticky rubbish, which I then poured into all kinds of cakes and desserts so that the goodness wouldn’t go to waste. Our liqueur did not resemble Nocino either in color or taste.
I concluded: greed destroys goodness. And I also changed my opinion about “Aunt Moti’s tattered notebook of recipes.” My husband’s cousin later gave me her recipe.
But I “gave up” with liquor, deciding that it was even better, so as not to get carried away with alcohol. But my hands are itching, and the free nuts ripen every year. That's why naturally The question of walnut jam came up, with which, fortunately, I have very good memories.
In my youth I had a friend and colleague Irakli from Tbilisi. My girlfriend and I went to see him several times a year, and he came to us. It was a golden time... This is me both about youth and about Tbilisi. There are enough memories for more than one post.
And I ate walnut jam there, which Irakli’s mother made. That jam seemed to me to be the best jam in the world! But I remember that Irakli’s mother said that the procedure was somewhat complicated, involving soaking the nuts in lime.
Where can I get this lime in Italy? And what is it called in Italian?
But good friend The Internet again came to my aid and reassured me, saying that everything is not so complicated: no lime is needed. Sleep well, dear cook, until the beginning of next June.
The next year, I honestly waited for the milky ripeness of the nuts. And improved their collection.
We no longer dragged the ladder across the city, but took a stick, which we use to remove hangers in closets. This stick is very convenient for bending branches. And instead of a bag, they took with them a cart on wheels. Still, it’s difficult to spend a little money on freebies. As a result, I successfully made 10 kg of jam. It turned out to be very tasty jam! And unusual in that it looks more like dessert than jam. Unexpected guests came to you, and you! - and a nut dessert.
This is how the question of walnut jam was resolved by itself. And in general they became insolent and went to collect them by car. But it was cold, the nuts were small and somewhat bruised. We only collected about 8 kg. But I humbly hope that this is just a freebie that is over.

So, the nuts are collected in early June during their milky ripeness, when a toothpick can pierce the fruit.
Each fruit is cut off at both ends and pierced several times with a fork.
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The nuts are filled with water, which needs to be changed twice a day. To remove the bitterness, the nuts are soaked for 8-10 days.

Then the nuts are boiled in water until they begin to slide off the knitting needle pierced through them. I use a pressure cooker. The nuts are cooked in it for about an hour and a half.

Then we weigh the nuts. For 1 kg of nuts take 1 kg of sugar and 300 grams of water. First, syrup is made, and then the nuts are boiled in this syrup for about two hours. When finished, you can add spices to the jam: cloves, cinnamon, anise.
The first time I added cloves, but I didn't like it. I tried adding ginger. But I didn’t feel any significant aftertaste. That means I didn’t put in enough.

I added bitter cocoa powder at the rate of 100 g of cocoa per 1 kg of nuts. The cocoa was first diluted in a ladle with a small amount of jam syrup, and then added to the main mass through a strainer so that there were no lumps.
Immediately after preparation, I was not impressed with the result. Then, after it thickened, I really liked the jam...